The dream doctorArthur Benjamin Reeve, Will Foster





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The Dream Doctor
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The Dream Doctor
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It was Mrs. Brainard, tall, almost imperial in her loose morning gown,
her dark eyes snapping fire at the sudden intrusion.
!!


The
Že - s º -
uſe ºf
--
Dream Doctor
The New Adventures of
Craig Kennedy, Scientific Detective
Arthur B. Reeve
By
Author of “The Silent Bullet,” “The Poisoned Pen” etc.
Illustrated by
Will Foster
	º
Printed at
THE WAN REES PRESS
NEw York
& !
, ºr ºf a
-
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º
* - -


742.778 A
Astor, LEnox and
TILDEN Foundations
R L
Copyright, 1913, 1914, by
International Magazine Co.
Copyright, 1914, by
Hearst's International Library Co., Inc.
4ll rights reserved, including the translation into foreign
danguages including the Scandinavian.


CHAPTER
II
III
IV
VI
VII
VIII
IX
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
Contents
The Dream Doctor .
The Soul Analysis
The Sybarite .
The Beauty Shop
The Phantom Circuit
The Detectaphone
The Green Curse
The Mummy Case
The Elixir of Life
The Toxin of Death
The Opium Joint
The “Dope Trust” .
The Kleptomaniac
The Crimeometer
The Vampire
The Blood Test .
The Bomb Maker
The “Coke.” Fiend .
The Submarine Mystery
The Wireless Detector .
The Ghouls -
The X-Ray “Movies”
The Death House
The Final Day
PAGE





The Dream Doctor





The Dream Doctor
I
The Dream Doctor
** AMESON, I want you to get the real story
about that friend of yours, Professor Ken-
nedy,” announced the managing editor of the Star,
early one afternoon when I had been summoned into
the sanctum.
From a batch of letters that had accumulated in
the litter on the top of his desk, he selected one and
glanced over it hurriedly.
“For instance,” he went on reflectively, “here's a
letter from a Constant Reader who asks, ‘Is this Pro-
fessor Craig Kennedy really all that you say he is,
and, if so, how can I find out about his new scientific
detective method?’”
He paused and tipped back his chair.
“Now, I don’t want to file these letters in the waste
basket. When people write letters to a newspaper,
it means something. I might reply, in this case, that .
he is as real as science, as real as the fight of society
against the criminal. But I want to do more than
that.”
The editor had risen, as if shaking himself mo-
9


I0 The Dream Doctor
mentarily loose from the ordinary routine of the of.
fice. -
“You get me?” he went on, enthusiastically. “In
other words, your assignment, Jameson, for the next
month is to do nothing except follow your friend Ken-
nedy. Start in right now, on the first, and cross-sec-
tion out of his life just one month, an average month.
Take things just as they come, set them down just
as they happen, and when you get through give me an
intimate picture of the man and his work.”
He picked up the schedule for the day and I knew
that the interview was at an end. I was to “get”
Kennedy.
Often I had written snatches of Craig's adventures,
but never before anything as ambitious as this as-
signment, for a whole month. At first it staggered
me. But the more I thought about it, the better I
liked it.
I hastened uptown to the apartment on the Heights
which Kennedy and I had occupied for some time.
I say we occupied it. We did so during those hours
when he was not at his laboratory at the Chemistry
Building on the University campus, or working on
One of those cases which fascinated him. . Fortu-
nately, he happened to be there as I burst in upon
him.
“Well?” he queried absently, looking up from a
book, one of the latest untranslated treatises on the
new psychology from the pen of the eminent scientist,
Dr. Freud of Vienna, “what brings you uptown so
early?”
Briefly as I could, I explained to him what it was


The Dream Doctor II
that I proposed to do. He listened without comment
and I rattled on, determined not to allow him to nega-
tive it.
“And,” I added, warming up to the subject, “I
think I owe a debt of gratitude to the managing
editor. He has crystallised in my mind an idea that
has long been latent. Why, Craig,” I went on, “that
is exactly what you want—to show people how they
can never hope to beat the modern scientific detec-
tive, to show that the crime-hunters have gone ahead
faster even than—”
The telephone tinkled insistently.
Without a word, Kennedy motioned to me to “lis-
ten in" on the extension on my desk, which he had
had placed there as a precaution so that I could cor-
roborate any conversation that took place over our
wire.
His action was quite enough to indicate to me that,
at least, he had no objection to the plan.
“This is Dr. Leslie-the coroner. Can you come
to the Municipal Hospital—right away?”
“Right away, Doctor,” answered Craig, hanging up
the receiver. “Walter, you'll come, too?”
A quarter of an hour later we were in the court-
yard of the city's largest hospital. In the balmy sun-
shine the convalescing patients were sitting on
benches or slowly trying their strength, walking over
the grass, clad in faded hospital bathrobes.
We entered the office and quickly were conducted
by an orderly to a little laboratory in a distant wing.
“What's the matter?” asked Craig, as we hurried
along.


I2 The Dream Doctor
“I don’t know exactly,” replied the man, “except
that it seems that Price Maitland, the broker, you
know, was picked up on the street and brought here
dying. He died before the doctors could relieve
him.”
Dr. Leslie was waiting impatiently for us. “What
do you make of that, Professor Kennedy?”
The coroner spread out on the table before us a
folded half-sheet of typewriting and searched Craig's
face eagerly to see what impression it made on him.
“We found it stuffed in Maitland's outside coat
pocket,” he explained. -
It was dateless and brief:
Dearest Madeline:
May God in "his mercy forgive me for what I am about to do.
I have just seen Dr. Ross. He has told me the nature of your
illness. I cannot bear to think that I am the cause, so I am
going simply to drop out of your life. I cannot live with you,
and I cannot live without you. Do not blame me. Always think
the best you can of me, even if you could not give me all.
Good-bye.
Your distracted husband,
PRICE.
At once the idea flashed over me that Maitland had
found himself suffering from some incurable disease
and had taken the quickest means of settling his di-
lemma.
Kennedy looked up suddenly from the note.
“Do you think it was a suicide?” asked the cor-
OIleI’.
“Suicide?” Craig repeated. “Suicides don't usu-
ally write on typewriters. A hasty note scrawled
on a sheet of paper in trembling pen or pencil, that


The Dream Doctor I3
is what they usually leave. No, some one tried to
escape the handwriting experts this way.”
“Exactly my idea,” agreed Dr. Leslie, with evident
satisfaction. “Now listen. Maitland was conscious
almost up to the last moment, and yet the hospital
doctors tell me they could not get a syllable of an
ante-mortem statement from him.”
“You mean he refused to talk?” I asked.
“No,” he replied; “it was more perplexing than
that. Even if the police had not made the usual
blunder of arresting him for intoxication instead of
sending him immediately to the hospital, it would
have made no difference. The doctors simply could
not have saved him, apparently. For the truth is,
Professor Kennedy, we don’t even know what was the
matter with him.”
Dr. Leslie seemed much excited by the case, as well
he might be.
“Maitland was found reeling and staggering on
Broadway this morning,” continued the coroner.
“Perhaps the policeman was not really at fault at
first for arresting him, but before the wagon came
Maitland was speechless and absolutely unable to
move a muscle.”
Dr. Leslie paused as he recited the strange facts,
then resumed: “His eyes reacted, all right. He
seemed to want to speak, to write, but couldn't. A
frothy saliva dribbled from his mouth, but he could
not frame a word. He was paralysed, and his
breathing was peculiar. They then hurried him to
the hospital as soon as they could. But it was of
no use.”


14 The Dream Doctor
Kennedy was regarding the doctor keenly as he
proceeded. Dr. Leslie paused again to emphasise
what he was about to say.
“Here is another strange thing. It may or may
not be of importance, but it is strange, nevertheless.
Before Maitland died they sent for his wife. He was
still conscious when she reached the hospital, could
recognise her, seemed to want to speak, but could
neither talk nor move. It was pathetic. She was
grief-stricken, of course. But she did not faint. She
is not of the fainting kind. It was what she said
that impressed everyone. “I knew it—I knew it,” she
cried. She had dropped on her knees by the side
of the bed. “I felt it. Only the other night I had
the horrible dream. I saw him in a terrific strug-
gle. I could not see what it was—it seemed to be
an invisible thing. I ran to him—then the scene
shifted. I saw a funeral procession, and in the cas-
ket I could see through the wood—his face—oh, it
was a warning! It has come true. I feared it, even
though I knew it was only a dream. Often I have
had the dream of that funeral procession and always
I saw the same face, his face. Oh, it is horrible—
terrible!”
It was evident that Dr. Leslie at least was im-
pressed by the dream.
“What have you done since?” asked Craig.
“I have turned loose everyone I could find avail-
able,” replied Dr. Leslie, handing over a sheaf of re-
ports.
Kennedy glanced keenly over them as they lay


The Dream Doctor I5
spread out on the table. “I should like to see the
body,” he said, at length.
It was lying in the next room, awaiting Dr. Les-
lie's permission to be removed.
“At first,” explained the doctor, leading the way,
“we thought it might be a case of knock-out drops,
chloral, you know—or perhaps chloral and whiskey,
a combination which might unite to make chloroform
in the blood. But no. We have tested for every-
thing we can think of. In fact there seems to be no
trace of a drug present. It is inexplicable. If Mait-
land really committed suicide, he must have taken
something—and as far as we can find out there is
no trace of anything. As far as we have gone we
have always been forced back to the original idea that
it was a natural death—perhaps due to shock of some
kind, or organic weakness.”
Kennedy had thoughtfully raised one of the life-
less hands and was examining it.
“Not that,” he corrected. “Even if the autopsy
shows nothing, it doesn’t prove that it was a nat-
ural death. Look!”
On the back of the hand was a tiny, red, swollen
mark. Dr. Leslie regarded it with pursed-up lips as
though not knowing whether it was significant or not.
“The tissues seemed to be thickly infiltrated with
a reddish serum and the blood-vessels congested,” he
remarked slowly. “There was a frothy mucus in the
bronchial tubes. The blood was liquid, dark, and
didn’t clot. The fact of the matter is that the autop-
sical research revealed absolutely nothing but a gen-


I6 - The Dream Doctor
eral disorganisation of the blood-corpuscles, a most
peculiar thing, but one the significance of which none
of us here can fathom. If it was poison that he took
or that had been given to him, it was the most subtle,
intangible, elusive, that ever came to my knowledge.
Why, there is absolutely no trace or clue—”
“Nor any use in looking for one in that way,” broke
in Kennedy decisively. “If we are to make any prog-
ress in this case, we must look elsewhere than to an
autopsy. There is no clue beyond what you have
found, if I am right. And I think I am right. It
was the venom of the cobra.”
“Cobra venom?” repeated the coroner, glancing up
at a row of technical works.
“Yes. No, it's no use trying to look it up. There
is no way of verifying a case of cobra poisoning ex-
cept by the symptoms. It is not like any other poi-
soning in the world.”
Dr. Leslie and I looked at each other, aghast at
the thought of a poison so subtle that it defied de-
tection.
“You think he was bitten by a snake?” I blurted
out, half incredulous.
“Oh, Walter, on Broadway? No, of course not.
But cobra venom has a medicinal value. It is sent
here in small quantities for various medicinal pur-
poses. Then, too, it would be easy to use it. A
scratch on the hand in the passing crowd, a quick
showing of the letter into the pocket of the victim—
and the murderer would probably think to go un-
detected.”
We stood dismayed at the horror of such a scien-


The Dream Doctor 17
tific murder and the meagreness of the materials to
work on in tracing it out.
“That dream was indeed peculiar,” ruminated
Craig, before we had really grasped the import of
his quick revelation.
“You don’t mean to say that you attach any im-
portance to a dream?” I asked hurriedly, trying to
follow him. -
Kennedy merely shrugged his shoulders, but I
could see plainly enough that he did.
“You haven’t given this letter out to the press?”
he asked.
“Not yet,” answered Dr. Leslie.
“Then don’t, until I say to do so. I shall need to
keep it.”
The cab in which we had come to the hospital was
still waiting. “We must see Mrs. Maitland first,”
said Kennedy, as we left the nonplused coroner and
his assistants.
The Maitlands lived, we soon found, in a large old-
fashioned brownstone house just off Fifth Avenue.
Kennedy's card with the message that it was very
urgent brought us in as far as the library, where we
sat for a moment looking around at the quiet refine-
ment of a more than Well-to-do home.
On a desk at one end of the long room was a type-
writer. Kennedy rose. There was not a sound of
any one in either the hallway or the adjoining rooms.
A moment later he was bending quietly over the type-
writer in the corner, running off a series of charac-
ters on a sheet of paper. A sound of a closing door
upstairs, and he quickly jammed the paper into his


I8 The Dream Doctor
pocket, retraced his steps, and was sitting quietly
opposite me again.
Mrs. Maitland was a tall, perfectly formed woman
of baffling age, but with the impression of both youth
and maturity which was very fascinating. She was
calmer now, and although she seemed to be of any-
thing but a hysterical nature, it was quite evident
that her nervousness was due to much more than the
shock of the recent tragic event, great as that must
have been. It may have been that I recalled the
words of the note, “Dr. Ross has told me the nature
of your illness,” but I fancied that she had been suf-
fering from some nervous trouble.
“There is no use prolonging our introduction, Mrs.
Maitland,” began Kennedy. “We have called be-
cause the authorities are not yet fully convinced that
Mr. Maitland committed suicide.”
It was evident that she had seen the note, at least.
“Not a suicide?” she repeated, looking from one to
the other of us.
“Mr. Masterson on the wire, ma'am,” whispered a
maid. “Do you wish to speak to him? He begged
to say that he did not wish to intrude, but he felt
that if there—”
“Yes, I will talk to him—in my room,” she inter-
rupted.
I thought that there was just a trace of well-con-
cealed confusion, as she excused herself.
We rose. Kennedy did not resume his seat im-
mediately. Without a word or look he completed
his work at the typewriter by abstracting several
blank sheets of paper from the desk.


The Dream Doctor 19
A few moments later Mrs. Maitland returned,
calmer.
“In his note,” resumed Kennedy, “he spoke of Dr.
ROSS and—”
“Oh,” she cried, “can't you see Dr. Ross about it?
Really I–I oughtn't to be—questioned in this way
—not now, so soon after what I’ve had to go
through.”
It seemed that her nerves were getting unstrung
again. Kennedy rose to go.
“Later, come to see me,” she pleaded. “But now
—you must realise—it is too much. I cannot talk
—I cannot.”
“Mr. Maitland had no enemies that you know of?”
asked Kennedy, determined to learn something now,
at least.
“No, no. None that would—do that.”
“You had had no quarrel?” he added.
“No-we never quarrelled. Oh, Price—why did
you? How could you?”
Her feelings were apparently rapidly getting the
better of her. Kennedy bowed, and we withdrew si-
lently. He had learned one thing. She believed or
wanted others to believe in the note.
At a public telephone, a few minutes later, Ken-
nedy was running over the names in the telephone
book. “Let me see—here's an Arnold Masterson,”
he considered. Then turning the pages he went on,
“Now we must find this Dr. Ross. There—Dr. Shel-
don Ross—specialist in nerve diseases—that must be
the one. He lives only a few blocks further up-
town.”


20 The Dream Doctor
Handsome, well built, tall, dignified, in fact dis-
tinguished, Dr. Ross proved to be a man whose very
face and manner were magnetic, as should be those
of one who had chosen his branch of the profession.
“You have heard, I suppose, of the strange death
of Price Maitland?” began Kennedy when we were
seated in the doctor’s office.
“Yes, about an hour ago.” It was evident that he
was studying us.
“Mrs. Maitland, I believe, is a patient of yours?”
“Yes, Mrs. Maitland is one of my patients,” he ad-
mitted interrogatively. Then, as if considering that
Rennedy's manner was not to be mollified by any-
thing short of a show of confidence, he added: “She
came to me 'several months ago. I have had her
under treatment for nervous trouble since then, with-
out a marked improvement.”
“And Mr. Maitland,” asked Kennedy, “was he a
patient, too?”
“Mr. Maitland,” admitted the doctor with some
reticence, “had called on me this morning, but no,
he was not a patient.”
“Did you notice anything unusual?”
“He seemed to be much worried,” Dr. Ross replied
guardedly.
Kennedy took the suicide note from his pocket and
handed it to him.
“I suppose you have heard of this?” asked Craig.
The doctor read it hastily, then looked up, as if
measuring from Kennedy's manner just how much
he knew. “As nearly as I could make out,” he said
slowly, his reticence to outward appearance gone,


The Dream Doctor 21
“Maitland seemed to have something on his mind.
He came inquiring as to the real cause of his wife's
nervousness. Before I had talked to him long I gath-
ered that he had a haunting fear that she did not love
him any more, if ever. I fancied that he even
doubted her fidelity.”
I wondered why the doctor was talking so freely,
now, in contrast with his former secretiveness.
“Do you think he was right?” shot out Kennedy
quickly, eying Dr. Ross keenly.
“No, emphatically, no; he was not right,” replied
the doctor, meeting Craig's scrutiny without flinch-
ing. “Mrs. Maitland,” he went on more slowly as if
carefully weighing every word, “belongs to a large
and growing class of women in whom, to speak
frankly, sex seems to be suppressed. She is a very
handsome and attractive woman—you have seen her?
Yes? You must have noticed, though, that she is
really frigid, cold, intellectual.”
The doctor was so sharp and positive about his
first statement and so careful in phrasing the second
that I, at least, jumped to the conclusion that Mait-
land might have been right, after all. I imagined
that Kennedy, too, had his suspicions of the doctor.
“Have you ever heard of or used cobra venom in
any of your medical work?” he asked casually.
Dr. Ross wheeled in his chair, surprised.
“Why, yes,” he replied quickly. “You know that
it is a test for blood diseases, one of the most recently
discovered and used parallel to the old tests. It is
known as the Weil cobra-venom test.”
“Do you use it often?”
..


22 The Dream Doctor
“N-no,” he replied. “My practice ordinarily does
not lie in that direction. I used it not long ago, once,
though. I have a patient under my care, a well-
known club-man. He came to me originally—”
“Arnold Masterson?” asked Craig.
“Yes—how did you know his name?”
“Guessed it,” replied Craig laconically, as if he
knew much more than he cared to tell. “He was a
friend of Mrs. Maitland's, was he not?”
“I should say not,” replied Dr. Ross, without hesi-
tation. He was quite ready to talk without being
urged. “Ordinarily,” he explained confidentially,
“professional ethics seals my lips, but in this in-
stance, since you seem to know so much, I may as
Well tell more.”
I hardly knew whether to take him at his face value
or not. Still he went on : “Mrs. Maitland is, as I
have hinted at, what we specialists would call a con-
sciously frigid but unconsciously passionate woman.
As an intellectual woman she suppresses nature.
But nature does and will assert herself, we believe.
Often you will find an intellectual woman attracted
unreasonably to a purely physical man—I mean,
speaking generally, not in particular cases. You
have read Ellen Key, I presume? Well, she expresses
it well in some of the things she has written about
affinities. Now, don’t misunderstand me,” he cau-
tioned. “I am speaking generally, not of this indi-
vidual case.”
I was following Dr. Ross closely. When he talked
so, he was a most fascinating man.
“Mrs. Maitland,” he resumed, “has been much


The Dream Doctor 23
troubled by her dreams, as you have heard, doubt-
less. The other day she told me of another dream.
In it she seemed to be attacked by a bull, which sud-
denly changed into a serpent. I may say that I had
asked her to make a record of her dreams, as well
as other data, which I thought might be of use in the
study and treatment of her nervous troubles. I read-
ily surmised that not the dream, but something else,
perhaps some recollection which it recalled, worried
her. By careful questioning I discovered that it was
—a broken engagement.”
“Yes,” prompted Kennedy.
“The bull-serpent, she admitted, had a half-human
face—the face of Arnold Masterson'"
Was Dr. Ross desperately shifting suspicion from
himself? I asked.
“Very strange—very,” ruminated Kennedy. “That
reminds me again. I wonder if you could let me have
a sample of this cobra venom?”
“Surely. Excuse me; I’ll get you some.”
The doctor had scarcely shut the door when Ken-
nedy began prowling around quietly. In the wait-
ing-room, which was now deserted, stood a type-
writer.
Quickly Craig ran over the keys of the machine
until he had a sample of every character. Then he
reached into drawer of the desk and hastily stuffed
several blank sheets of paper into his pocket.
“Of course I need hardly caution you in handling
this,” remarked Dr. Ross, as he returned. “You are
as well acquainted as I am with the danger attending
its careless and unscientific uses.”


24 The Dream Doctor
“I am, and I thank you very much,” said Kennedy.
We were standing in the waiting-room.
“You will keep me advised of any progress you
make in the case?” the doctor asked. “It compli-
cates, as you can well imagine, my treatment of Mrs.
Maitland.”
“I shall be glad to do so,” replied Kennedy, as we
departed.
An hour later found us in a handsomely appointed
bachelor apartment in a fashionable hotel overlook-
ing the lower entrance to the Park.
“Mr. Masterson, I believe?” inquired Kennedy, as
a slim, debonair, youngish-old man entered the room
in which we had been waiting.
“I am that same,” he smiled. “To what am I in
debted for this pleasure?”
We had been gazing at the various curios with
which he had made the room a veritable den of the
connoisseur.
“You have evidently travelled considerably,” re-
marked Kennedy, avoiding the question for the time.
“Yes, I have been back in this country only a few
weeks,” Masterson replied, awaiting the answer to
the first question.
“I called,” proceeded Kennedy, “in the hope that
you, Mr. Masterson, might be able to shed some light
on the rather peculiar case of Mr. Maitland, of whose
death, I suppose, you have already heard.”
“I 2”
“You have known Mrs. Maitland a long time?”
ignored Kennedy.
“We went to school together.”


The Dream Doctor 25
“And were engaged, were you not?”
Masterson looked at Kennedy in ill-concealed sur-
prise.
“Yes. But how did you know that? It was a
secret—only between us two—I thought. She broke
it off—not I.”
“She broke off the engagement?” prompted Ken-
nedy.
“Yes—a story about an escapade of mine and all
that sort of thing, you know—but, by Jove! I like
your nerve, sir.” Masterson frowned, then added:
“I prefer not to talk of that. There are some inci-
dents in a man’s life, particularly where a woman
is concerned, that are forbidden.”
“Oh, I beg pardon,” hastened Kennedy, “but, by
the way, you would have no objection to making a
statement regarding your trip abroad and your re-
cent return to this country—subsequent to—ah—
the incident which we will not refer to?”
“None whatever. I left New York in 1908, dis-
gusted with everything in general, and life here in
particular—”
“Would you object to jotting it down so that I can
get it straight?” asked Kennedy. “Just a brief ré-
sumé, you know.”
“No. Have you a pen or a pencil?”
“I think you might as well dictate it; it will take
only a minute to run it off on the typewriter.”
Masterson rang the bell. A young man appeared
noiselessly.
“Wix,” he said, “take this: ‘I left New York in
1908, travelling on the Continent, mostly in Paris,


26 The Dream Doctor
Vienna, and Rome. Latterly I have lived in Lon-
don, until six weeks ago, when I returned to New
York.” Will that serve?”
“Yes, perfectly,” said Kennedy, as he folded up the
sheet of paper which the young secretary handed to
him. “Thank you. I trust you won’t consider it
an impertinence if I ask you whether you were aware
that Dr. Ross was Mrs. Maitland's physician?”
“Of course I knew it,” Masterson replied frankly.
“I have given him up for that reason, although he
does not know it yet. I most strenuously object to
being the subject of what shall I call it?—his men-
tal vivisection.”
“Do you think he oversteps his position in trying
to learn of the mental life of his patients?” queried
Craig.
“I would rather say nothing further on that,
either,” replied Masterson. “I was talking over the
wire to Mrs. Maitland a few moments ago, giving her
my condolences and asking if there was anything I
could do for her immediately, just as I would have
done in the old days—only then, of course, I should
have gone to her directly. The reason I did not go,
but telephoned, was because this Ross seems to have
put some ridiculous notions into her head about me.
Now, look here; I don’t want to discuss this. I’ve
told you more than I intended, anyway.”
Masterson had risen. His suavity masked a final
determination to say no more.


- II
The Soul Analysis
HE day was far advanced after this series of
very unsatisfactory interviews. I looked at
Kennedy blankly. We seemed to have uncovered
so little that was tangible that I was much surprised
to find that apparently he was well contented with
what had happened in the case so far.
“I shall be busy for a few hours in the laboratory,
Walter,” he remarked, as we parted at the subway.
“I think, if you have nothing better to do, that you
might employ the time in looking up some of the gos-
sip about Mrs. Maitland and Masterson, to say noth-
ing of Dr. Ross,” he emphasised. “Drop in after
dinner.”
There was not much that I could find. Of Mrs.
Maitland there was practically nothing that I already
did not know from having seen her name in the pa-
pers. She was a leader in a certain set which was
devoting its activities to various social and moral
propaganda. Masterson’s early escapades were no-
torious even in the younger smart set in which he
had moved, but his years abroad had mellowed the
recollection of them. He had not distinguished him-
self in any way since his return to set gossip afloat,
nor had any tales of his doings abroad filtered through
to New York clubland. Dr. Ross, I found to my sur-
27


28 The Dream Doctor
prise, was rather better known than I had supposed,
both as a specialist and as a man about town. He
seemed to have risen rapidly in his profession as
physician to the ills of society's nerves.
I was amazed after dinner to find Kennedy doing
nothing at all.
“What's the matter?” I asked. “Have you struck
a snag?”
“No,” he replied slowly, “I was only waiting. I
told them to be here between half-past eight and
nine.”
“Who?” I queried.
“Dr. Leslie,” he answered. “He has the authority
to compel the attendance of Mrs. Maitland, Dr. Ross,
and Masterson.”
The quickness with which he had worked out a
case which was, to me, one of the most inexplicable
he had had for a long time, left me standing speech-
less.
One by one they dropped in during the next half-
hour, and, as usual, it fell to me to receive them and
smooth over the rough edges which always obtruded
at these little enforced parties in the laboratory.
Dr. Leslie and Dr. Ross were the first to arrive.
They had not come together, but had met at the door.
I fancied I saw a touch of professional jealousy in
their manner, at least on the part of Dr. Ross. Mas-
terson came, as usual ignoring the seriousness of the
matter and accusing us all of conspiring to keep him
from the first night of a light opera which was open-
ing. Mrs. Maitland followed, the unaccustomed pal-
lor of her face heightened by the plain black dress.


The Soul Analysis 29
I felt most uncomfortable, as indeed I think the rest
did. She merely inclined her head to Masterson,
seemed almost to avoid the eye of Dr. Ross, glared at
Dr. Leslie, and absolutely ignored me.
Craig had been standing aloof at his laboratory
table, beyond a nod of recognition paying little at-
tention to anything. He seemed to be in no hurry
to begin.
“Great as science is,” he commenced, at length,
“it is yet far removed from perfection. There are,
for instance, substances so mysterious, subtle, and
dangerous as to set the most delicate tests and pow-
erful lenses at naught, while they carry death most
horrible in their train.”
He could scarcely have chosen his opening words
with more effect.
“Chief among them,” he proceeded, “are those from
nature's own laboratory. There are some sixty spe-
cies of serpents, for example, with deadly venom.
Among these, as you doubtless have all heard, none
has brought greater terror to mankind than the cobra-
di-capello, the Naja tripudians of India. It is un-
necessary for me to describe the cobra or to say any-
thing about the countless thousands who have yielded
up their lives to it. I have here a small quantity of
the venom”—he indicated it in a glass beaker. “It
was obtained in New York, and I have tested it on
guinea-pigs. It has lost none of its potency.”
I fancied that there was a feeling of relief when
Rennedy by his actions indicated that he was not
going to repeat the test. -
“This venom,” he continued, “dries in the air into
*


30 The Dream Doctor
substance like small scales, soluble in water but not
in alcohol. It has only a slightly acrid taste and
odour, and, strange to say, is inoffensive on the tongue
or mucous surfaces, even in considerable quantities.
All we know about it is that in an open wound it is
deadly swift in action.”
It was difficult to sit unmoved at the thought that
before us, in only a few grains of the stuff, was enough
to kill us all if it were introduced into a scratch of
our skin.
“Until recently chemistry was powerless to solve
the enigma, the microscope to detect its presence, or
pathology to explain the reason for its deadly effect.
And even now, about all we know is that autopsical
research reveals absolutely nothing but the general
disorganisation of the blood corpuscles. In fact,
such poisoning is best known by the peculiar symp-
toms—the vertigo, weak legs, and falling jaw. The
victim is unable to speak or swallow, but is fully sen-
sible. He has nausea, paralysis, an accelerated pulse
at first followed rapidly by a weakening, with breath
slow and laboured. The pupils are contracted, but
react to the last, and he dies in convulsions like as-
phyxia. It is both a blood and a nerve poison.”
As Kennedy proceeded, Mrs. Maitland never took
her large eyes from his face.
Kennedy now drew from a large envelope in which
he protected it, the typewritten note which had been
found on Maitland. He said nothing about the “sui-
cide” as he quietly began a new line of accumulating
evidence.
“There is an increasing use of the typewriting ma-


The Soul Analysis 31
chine for the production of spurious papers,” he be-
gan, rattling the note significantly. “It is partly due
to the great increase in the use of the typewriter gen-
erally, but more than all is it due to the erroneous
idea that fraudulent typewriting cannot be detected.
The fact is that the typewriter is perhaps a worse
means of concealing identity than is disguised hand-
writing. It does not afford the effective protection
to the criminal that is supposed. On the contrary,
the typewriting of a fraudulent document may be the
direct means by which it can be traced to its source.
First we have to determine what kind of machine a
certain piece of writing was done with, then what
particular machine.”
He paused and indicated a number of little instru-
ments on the table.
“For example,” he resumed, “the Lovibond tintom-
eter tells me its story of the colour of the ink used
in the ribbon of the machine that wrote this note as
well as several standard specimens which I have been
able to obtain from three machines on which it might
have been written.
“That leads me to speak of the quality of the paper
in this half-sheet that was found on Mr. Maitland.
Sometimes such a half-sheet may be mated with the
other half from which it was torn as accurately as if
the act were performed before your eyes. There was
no such good fortune in this case, but by measure-
ments made by the vernier micrometer caliper I have
found the precise thickness of several samples of
paper as compared to that of the suicide note. I
need hardly add that in thickness and quality, as well


32 The Dream Doctor
as in the tint of the ribbon, the note points to one
person as the author.” -
No One moved.
“And there are other proofs—unescapable,” Ken-
* nedy hurried on. “For instance, I have counted the
number of threads to the inch in the ribbon, as shown
by the letters of this note. That also corresponds
to the number in one of the three ribbons.”
Kennedy laid down a glass plate peculiarly ruled
in little squares.
“This,” he explained, “is an alignment test plate,
through which can be studied accurately the spacing
and alignment of typewritten characters. There are
in this pica type ten to the inch horizontally and six
to the inch vertically. That is usual. Perhaps you
are not acquainted with the fact that typewritten
characters are in line both ways, horizontally and
vertically. There are nine possible positions for
each character which may be assumed with reference
to one of these little standard squares of the test
plate. You cannot fail to appreciate what an im-
mense impossibility there is that one machine should
duplicate the variations out of the true which the
microscope detects for several characters on an-
other.
“Not only that, but the faces of many letters inev-
itably become broken, worn, battered, as well as out
of alignment, or slightly shifted in their position on
the type bar. The type faces are not flat, but a little
concave to conform to the roller. There are thou-
sands of possible divergences, scars, and deformities
in each machine.


The Soul Analysis 33
“Such being the case,” he concluded, “typewriting
has an individuality like that of the Bertillon sys-
tem, finger-prints, or the portrait parlé.”
He paused, then added quickly: “What machine
was it in this case? I have samples here from that
of Dr. Ross, from a machine used by Mr. Masterson's
secretary, and from a machine which was accessible
to both Mr. and Mrs. Maitland.”
Kennedy stopped, but he was not yet prepared to
relieve the suspense of two of those whom his inves-
tigation would absolve.
“Just one other point,” he resumed mercilessly, “a
point which a few years ago would have been inex-
plicable—if not positively misleading and productive
of actual mistake. I refer to the dreams of Mrs.
Maitland.” -
I had been expecting it, yet the words startled me.
What must they have done to her? But she kept ad-
mirable control of herself.
“Dreams used to be treated very seriously by the
ancients, but until recently modern scientists, reject-
ing the ideas of the dark ages, have scouted dreams.
To-day, however, we study them scientifically, for we
believe that whatever is, has a reason. Dr. Ross, I
think, is acquainted with the new and remarkable
theories of Dr. Sigmund Freud, of Vienna?”
Dr. Ross nodded. “I dissent vigorously from some
of Freud’s conclusions,” he hastened.
“Let me state them first,” resumed Craig.
“Dreams, says Freud, are very important. They
give us the most reliable information concerning the
individual. But that is only possible.”—Kennedy


34 The Dream Doctor
emphasised the point—“if the patient is in entire
rapport with the doctor.
“Now, the dream is not an absurd and senseless
jumble, but a perfect mechanism and has a definite
meaning in penetrating the mind. It is as though
we had two streams of thought, one of which we al-
low to flow freely, the other of which we are con-
stantly repressing, pushing back into the subcon-
scious, or unconscious. This matter of the evolution
of our individual mental life is too long a story to
bore you with at such a critical moment.
“But the resistances, the psychic censors of our
ideas, are always active, except in sleep. Then the
repressed material comes to the surface. But the re-
sistances never entirely lose their power, and the
dream shows the material distorted. Seldom does
one recognise his own repressed thoughts or unat-
tained wishes. The dream really is the guardian of
sleep to satisfy the activity of the unconscious and re-
pressed mental processes that would otherwise dis-
turb sleep by keeping the censor busy. In the case
of a nightmare the watchman or censor is aroused,
finds himself overpowered, so to speak, and calls on
consciousness for help.
“There are three kinds of dreams—those which rep-
resent an unrepressed wish as fulfilled, those that
represent the realisation of a repressed wish in an
entirely concealed form, and those that represent the
realisation of a repressed wish in a form insufficiently
or only partially concealed. -
“Dreams are not of the future, but of the past, ex-
cept as they show striving for unfulfilled wishes.


The Soul Analysis 35
Whatever may be denied in reality we nevertheless
can realise in another way—in our dreams. And
probably more of our daily life, conduct, moods, be-
liefs than we think, could be traced to preceding
dreams.”
Dr. Ross was listening attentively, as Craig turned
to him. “This is perhaps the part of Freud's theory
from which you dissent most strongly. Freud says
that as soon as you enter the intimate life of a pa-
tient you begin to find sex in some form. In fact, the
best indication of abnormality would be its absence.
Sex is one of the strongest of human impulses, yet
the one subjected to the greatest repression. For
that reason it is the weakest point in our cultural
development. In a normal life, he says, there are no
neuroses. Let me proceed now with what the Freud-
ists call the psychanalysis, the soul analysis, of Mrs.
Maitland.”
It was startling in the extreme to consider the pos-
sibilities to which this new science might lead, as he
proceeded to illustrate it.
“Mrs. Maitland,” he continued, “your dream of
fear was a dream of what we call the fulfilment of a
suppressed wish. Moreover, fear always denotes a
sexual idea underlying the dream. In fact, morbid
anxiety means surely unsatisfied love. The old
Greeks knew it. The gods of fear were born of the
goddess of love. Consciously you feared the death
of your husband because unconsciously you wished
it.”
It was startling, dramatic, cruel, perhaps, merci-
less—this dissecting of the soul of the handsome


36 The Dream Doctor
woman before us; but it had come to a point where
it was necessary to get at the truth.
Mrs. Maitland, hitherto pale, was now flushed and
indignant. Yet the very manner of her indignation
showed the truth of the new psychology of dreams,
for, as I learned afterward, people often become in-
dignant when the Freudists strike what is called the
“main complex.”
“There are other motives just as important,” pro-
tested Dr. Ross. “Here in America the money mo-
tive, ambition—”
“Let me finish,” interposed Kennedy. “I want to
consider the other dream also. Fear is equivalent
to a wish in this sort of dream. It also, as I have
said, denotes sex. In dreams animals are usually
symbols. Now, in this second dream we find both
the bull and the serpent, from time immemorial, sym-
bols of the continuing of the life-force. Dreams are
always based on experiences or thoughts of the day
preceding the dreams. You, Mrs. Maitland, dreamed
of a man's face on these beasts. There was every
chance of having him suggested to you. You think
you hate him. Consciously you reject him; uncon-
sciously you accept him. Any of the new psycholo-
gists who knows the intimate connection between
love and hate, would understand how that is possi-
ble. Love does not extinguish hate; or hate, love.
They repress each other. The opposite sentiment
may very easily grow.”
The situation was growing more tense as he pro-
ceeded. Was not Kennedy actually taxing her with
lowing another?


The Soul Analysis 37
“The dreamer,” he proceeded remorselessly, “is al-
ways the principal actor in a dream, or the dream
centres about the dreamer most intimately. Dreams
are personal. We never dream about matters that
really concern others, but ourselves.
“Years ago,” he continued, “you suffered what the
new psychologists call a “psychic trauma’—a soul-
wound. You were engaged, but your censored con-
sciousness rejected the manner of life of your fiancé.
In pique you married Price Maitland. But you
never lost your real, subconscious love for an-
Other.”
He stopped, then added in a low tone that was al-
most inaudible, yet which did not call for an answer,
“Could you—be honest with yourself, for you need
say not a word aloud—could you always be sure of
yourself in the face of any situation?”
She looked startled. Her ordinarily inscrutable
face betrayed everything, though it was averted from
the rest of us and could be seen only by Kennedy.
She knew the truth that she strove to repress; she
was afraid of herself.
“It is dangerous,” she murmured, “to be with a
person who pays attention to such little things. If
every one were like you, I would no longer breathe
a syllable of my dreams.”
She was sobbing now.
What was back of it all? I had heard of the so-
called resolution dreams. I had heard of dreams that
kill, of unconscious murder, of the terrible acts of the
subconscious somnambulist of which the actor has
no recollection in the waking state until put under


38 The Dream Doctor
hypnotism. Was it that which Kennedy was driving
at disclosing?
Dr. Ross moved nearer to Mrs. Maitland as if to
reassure her. Craig was studying attentively the ef-
fect of his revelation both on her and on the other
faces before him.
Mrs. Maitland, her shoulders bent with the out-
pouring of the long-suppressed emotion of the even-
ing and of the tragic day, called for sympathy which,
I could see, Craig would readily give when he had
reached the climax he had planned.
“Kennedy,” exclaimed Masterson, pushing aside
Dr. Ross, as he bounded to the side of Mrs. Mait-
land, unable to restrain himself longer, “Kennedy,
you are a faker—nothing but a damned dream doctor
—in scientific disguise.”
“Perhaps,” replied Craig, with a quiet curl of the
lip. “But the threads of the typewriter ribbon, the
alignment of the letters, the paper, all the ‘finger-
prints' of that type-written note of suicide were those
of the machine belonging to the man who caused the
soul-wound, who knew Madeline Maitland’s inmost
heart better than herself—because he had heard of
Freud undoubtedly, when he was in Vienna—who
knew that he held her real love still, who posed as a
patient of Dr. Ross to learn her secrets as well as to
secure the subtle poison of the cobra. That man, per-
haps, merely brushed against Price Maitland in the
crowd, enough to scratch his hand with the needle,
shove the false note into his pocket—anything to win
the woman who he knew loved him, and whom he
could win. Masterson, you are that man!”


The Soul Analysis 39
The next half hour was crowded kaleidoscopically
with events—the call by Dr. Leslie for the police, the
departure of the Coroner with Masterson in custody,
and the efforts of Dr. Ross to calm his now almost
hysterical patient, Mrs. Maitland.
Then a calm seemed to settle down over the old
laboratory which had so often been the scene of such
events, tense with human interest. I could scarcely
conceal my amazement, as I watched Kennedy quietly
restoring to their places the pieces of apparatus he
had used.
“What's the matter?” he asked, catching my eye
as he paused with the tintometer in his hand.
“Why,” I exclaimed, “that's a fine way to start a
month! Here's just one day gone and you’ve caught
your man. Are you going to keep that up? If you
are—I’ll quit and skip to February. I’ll choose the
shortest month, if that's the pace!”
“Any month you please,” he smiled grimly, as he
reluctantly placed the tintometer in its cabinet.
There was no use. I knew that any other month
would have been just the same.
“Well,” I replied weakly, “all I can hope is that
every day won’t be as strenuous as this has been. I
hope, at least, you will give me time to make some
notes before you start off again.”
“Can't say,” he answered, still busy returning par-
aphernalia to its accustomed place. “I have no con-
trol over the cases as they come to me—except that I
can turn down those that don’t interest me.”
“Then,” I sighed wearily, “turn down the next one.
I must have rest. I’m going home to sleep.”


40 The Dream Doctor
“Very well,” he said, making no move to follow me.
I shook my head doubtfully. It was impossible to
force a card on Kennedy. Instead of showing any
disposition to switch off the laboratory lights, he ap-
peared to be regarding a row of half-filled test-tubes
with the abstraction of a man who has been inter-
rupted in the midst of an absorbing occupation.
“Good night,” I said at length.
“Good night,” he echoed mechanically.
I know that he slept that night—at least his bed
had been slept in when I awoke in the morning. But
he was gone. But then, it was not unusual for him,
when the fever for work was on him, to consider even
five or fewer hours a night's rest. It made no differ
ence when I argued with him. The fact that he
thrived on it himself and could justify it by pointing
to other scientists was refutation enough.
Slowly I dressed, breakfasted, and began transcrib-
ing what I could from the hastily jotted down notes
of the day before. I knew that the work, whatever
it was, in which he was now engaged must be in the
nature of research, dear to his heart. Otherwise, he
Would have left word for me.
No word came from him, however, all day, and I
had not only caught up in my notes, but, my appetite
whetted by our first case, had become hungry for
more. In fact I had begun to get a little worried at
the continued silence. A hand on the knob of the
door or a ring of the telephone would have been a
welcome relief. I was gradually becoming aware of
the fact that I liked the excitement of the life as much
as Kennedy did.


The Soul Analysis 41
I knew it when the sudden sharp tinkle of the tele-
phone set my heart throbbing almost as quickly as the
little bell hammer buzzed.
“Jameson, for Heaven's sake find Kennedy imme-
diately and bring him over here to the Novella Beauty
Parlour. We’ve got the worst case I’ve been up
against in a long time. Dr. Leslie, the coroner, is
here, and says we must not make a move until Ken-
nedy arrives.”
I doubt whether in all our long acquaintance I had
ever heard First Deputy O’Connor more wildly ex-
cited and apparently more helpless than he seemed
over the telephone that night.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Never mind, never mind. Find Kennedy,” he
called back almost brusquely. “It’s Miss Blanche
Blaisdell, the actress—she’s been found dead here.
The thing is an absolute mystery. Now get him, get
him.”
It was still early in the evening, and Kennedy had
not come in, nor had he sent any word to our apart-
ment. O'Connor had already tried the laboratory.
As for myself, I had not the slightest idea where
Craig was. I knew the case must be urgent if both
the deputy apd the coroner were waiting for him.
Still, after half an hour's vigorous telephoning, I was
unable to find a trace of Kennedy in any of his usual
haunts.
In desperation I left a message for him with the
hall-boy in case he called up, jumped into a cab, and
rode over to the laboratory, hoping that some of the
care-takers might still be about and might know some-


42 The Dream Doctor
thing of his whereabouts. The janitor was able to
enlighten me to the extent of telling me that a big
limousine had called for Kennedy an hour or so be-
fore, and that he had left in great haste.
I had given it up as hopeless and had driven back
to the apartment to wait for him, when the hall-boy
made a rush at me just as I was paying my fare. .
“Mr. Kennedy on the wire, sir,” he cried as he
half dragged me into the hall.
“Walter,” almost shouted Kennedy, “I’m over at
the Washington Heights Hospital with Dr. Barron
—you remember Barron, in our class at college?
He has a very peculiar case of a poor girl whom he
found wandering on the street and brought here.
Most unusual thing. He came over to the laboratory
after me in his car. Yes, I have the message that you
left with the hall-boy. Come up here and pick me
up, and we’ll ride right down to the Novella. Good-
bye.”
I had not stopped to ask questions and prolong the
conversation, knowing as I did the fuming impatience
of O'Connor. It was relief enough to know that Ken-
nedy was located at last.
He was in the psychopathic ward with Barron, as
I hurried in. The girl whom he had mentioned over
the telephone was then quietly sleeping under the in-
fluence of an opiate, and they were discussing the case
Outside in the hall. º
“What do you think of it yourself?” Barron was
asking, nodding to me to join them. Then he added
for my enlightenment: “I found this girl wandering
bareheaded in the street. To tell the truth, I thought


III
The Sybarite
E found the Novella Beauty Parlour on the top
floor of an office-building just off Fifth Ave-
nue on a side street not far from Forty-second Street.
A special elevator, elaborately fitted up, wafted us
up with express speed. As the door opened we saw
a vista of dull-green lattices, little gateways hung
with roses, windows of diamond-paned glass set in
white wood, rooms with little white enamelled mani-
cure-tables and chairs, amber lights glowing with soft
incandescence in deep bowers of fireproof tissue flow-
ers. There was a delightful warmth about the place,
and the seductive scents and delicate odours be-
tokened the haunt of the twentieth-century Sybarite.
Both O’Connor and Leslie, strangely out of place
in the enervating luxury of the now deserted beauty-
parlour, were still waiting for Kennedy with a grim
determination. º
“A most peculiar thing,” whispered O'Connor, dash-
ing forward the moment the elevator door opened.
“We can’t seem to find a single cause for her death.
The people up here say it was a suicide, but I never
accept the theory of suicide unless there are un-
doubted proofs. So far there have been none in this
case. There was no reason for it.” -
Seated in one of the large easy-chairs of the recep-
44


The Sybarite 45
tion-room, in a corner with two of O'Connor's men
standing watchfully near, was a man who was the
embodiment of all that was nervous. He was alter-
nately wringing his hands and rumpling his hair.
Beside him was a middle-sized, middle-aged lady in a
most amazing state of preservation, who evidently
presided over the cosmetic mysteries beyond the male
ken. She was so perfectly groomed that she looked
as though her clothes were a mould into which she
had literally been poured.
“Professor and Madame Millefleur-otherwise Mil-
ler,”—whispered O'Connor, noting Kennedy's ques-
tioning gaze and taking his arm to hurry him down
a long, softly carpeted corridor, flanked on either
side by little doors. “They run the shop. They say
one of the girls just opened the door and found her
dead.” *
Near the end, one of the doors stood open, and be-
fore it Dr. Leslie, who had preceded us, paused. He
motioned to us to look in. It was a little dressing-
room, containing a single white-enamelled bed, a
dresser, and a mirror. But it was not the scant
though elegant furniture that caused us to start back.
There under the dull half-light of the corridor lay
a woman, most superbly formed. She was dark, and
the thick masses of her hair, ready for the hair-
dresser, fell in a tangle over her beautifully chiselled
features and full, rounded shoulders and neck. A
scarlet bathrobe, loosened at the throat, actually
accentuated rather than covered the voluptuous lines
of her figure, down to the slender ankle which had
been the beginning of her fortune as a danseuse.


46 The Dream Doctor
Except for the marble pallor of her face it was dif-
ficult to believe that she was not sleeping. And yet
there she was, the famous Blanche Blaisdell, dead—
dead in the little dressing-room of the Novella Beauty
Parlour, surrounded as in life by mystery and lux-
ury.
We stood for several moments speechless, stupefied.
At last O’Connor silently drew a letter from his
pocket. It was written on the latest and most deli-
cate of scented stationery.
“It was lying sealed on the dresser when we ar-
rived,” explained O’Connor, holding it so that we
could not see the address. “I thought at first she had
really committed suicide and that this was a note of
explanation. But it is not. Listen. It is just a
line or two. It reads: “Am feeling better now,
though that was a great party last night. Thanks
for the newspaper puff which I have just read. It
was very kind of you to get them to print it. Meet
me at the same place and same time to-night. Your
Blanche.” The note was not stamped, and was never
sent. Perhaps she rang for a messenger. At any
rate, she must have been dead before she could send
it. But it was addressed to-Burke Collins.”
“Burke Collins!” exclaimed Kennedy and I to-
gether in amazement.
He was one of the leading corporation lawyers in
the country, director in a score of the largest com-
panies, officer in half a dozen charities and social or-
ganisations, patron of art and opera. It seemed im-
possible, and I at least did not hesitate to say so. For


º The Sybarite 47
answer O’Connor simply laid the letter and envelope
down on the dresser.
It seemed to take some time to convince Kennedy.
There it was in black and white, however, in
Blanche Blaisdell's own vertical hand. Try to figure
it out as I could, there seemed to be only one conclu-
sion, and that was to accept it. What it was that in-
terested him I did not know, but finally he bent down
and sniffed, not at the scented letter, but at the cover-
ing on the dresser. When he raised his head I saw
that he had not been looking at the letter at all, but
at a spot on the cover near it. .
“Sn-ff, sn-ff,” he sniffed, thoughtfully closing his
eyes as if considering something. “Yes—oil of tur-
pentine.”
Suddenly he opened his eyes, and the blank look of
abstraction that had masked his face was broken
through by a gleam of comprehension that I knew
flashed the truth to him intuitively.
“Turn out that light in the corridor,” he ordered
quickly.
Dr. Leslie found and turned the switch. There we
were alone, in the now weird little dressing-room,
alone with that horribly lovely thing lying there cold
and motionless on the little white bed.
Kennedy moved forward in the darkness. Gently,
almost as if she were still the living, pulsing, sentient
Blanche Blaisdell who had entranced thousands, he
opened her mouth.
A cry from O'Connor, who was standing in front of
me, followed. “What's that, those little spots on her


º
*
48 The Dream Doctor
tongue and throat? They glow. It is the corpse
light!”
Surely enough, there were little luminous spots in
her mouth. I had heard somewhere that there is a
phosphorescence appearing during decay of organic
substances which once gave rise to the ancient super-
stition of “corpse lights” and the will-o'-the-wisp. It
was really due, I knew, to living bacteria. But there
surely had been no time for such micro-organisms to
develop, even in the almost tropic heat of the Novella.
Could she have been poisoned by these phosphores-
cent bacilli? What was it—a strange new mouth-
malady that had attacked this notorious adventuress
and woman of luxury?
Leslie had flashed up the light again before Craig
spoke. We were all watching him keenly.
“Phosphorus, phosphoric acid, or phosphoric salve,”
Craig said slowly, looking eagerly about the room
as if in search of something that would explain it.
He caught sight of the envelope still lying on the
dresser. He picked it up, toyed with it, looked at
the top where O'Connor had slit it, then deliberately
tore the flap off the back where it had been glued in
sealing the letter.
“Put the light out again,” he asked.
Where the thin line of gum was on the back of the
flap, in the darkness there glowed the same sort of
brightness that we had seen in a speck here and there
on Blanche Blaisdell's lips and in her mouth. The
truth flashed over me. Some one had placed the
stuff, whatever it was, on the flap of the envelope,
knowing that she must touch her lips to it to seal it.


The Sybarite 49
She had done so, and the deadly poison had entered
her mouth.
As the light went up again Kennedy added: “Oil
of turpentine removes traces of phosphorus, phos-
phoric acid, or phosphoric salve, which are insoluble
in anything else except ether and absolute alcohol.
Some one who knew that tried to eradicate them, but
did not wholly succeed. O’Connor, see if you can
find either phosphorus, the oil, or the salve anywhere
in the shop.”
Then as O'Connor and Leslie hurriedly disappeared
he added to me: “Another of those strange coinci-
dences, Walter. You remember the girl at the hos-
pital? ‘Look, don’t you see it? She's afire. Her
lips shine—they shine, they shine!’”
Kennedy was still looking carefully over the room.
In a little wicker basket was a newspaper which was
open at the page of theatrical news, and as I glanced
quickly at it I saw a most laudatory paragraph about
her.
Beneath the paper were some torn scraps. Ken-
nedy picked them up and pieced them together,
“Dearest Blanche,” they read. “I hope you’re feel-
ing better after that dinner last night. Can you
meet me to-night? Write me immediately. Collie.”
He placed the scraps carefully in his wallet.
There was nothing more to be done here apparently.
As we passed down the corridor we could hear a man
apparently raving in good English and bad French.
It proved to be Millefleur-or Miller—and his raving
was as overdone as that of a third-rate actor. Ma-
dame was trying to calm him.


50 The Dream Doctor
“Henri, Henri, don’t go on so,” she was saying.
“A suicide—in the Novella. It will be in all the
papers. We shall be ruined. Oh—oh "
“Here, can that sob stuff,” broke in one of O'Con-
nor’s officers. “You can tell it all when the chief
takes you to headquarters, see?”
Certainly the man made no very favourable impres-
sion by his actions. There seemed to be much that
was forced about them, that was more incriminating
than a stolid silence would have been.
Between them Monsieur and Madame made out,
however, to repeat to Kennedy their version of what
had happened. It seemed that a note addressed to
Miss Blaisdell had been left by some one on the desk
in the reception-room. No one knew who left it, but
one of the girls had picked it up and delivered it to
her in her dressing-room. A moment later, she rang
her bell and called for one of the girls named Agnes,
who was to dress her hair. Agnes was busy, and the
actress asked her to get paper, a pen, and ink. At
least it seemed that way, for Agnes got them for her.
A few minutes later her bell rang again, and Agnes
went down, apparently to tell her that she was now
ready to dress her hair.
The next thing any one knew was a piercing shriek
from the girl. She ran down the corridor, still shriek-
ing, out into the reception-room and rushed into the
elevator, which happened to be up at the time. That
was the last they had seen of her. The other girls
saw Miss Blaisdell lying dead, and a panic followed.
The customers dressed quickly and fled, almost in
panic. All was confusion. By that time a police-


The Sybarite 51
man had arrived, and soon after O’Connor and the
coroner had come. -
There was little use in cross-questioning the couple.
They had evidently had time to agree on the story;
that is, supposing it were not true. Only a scientific
third degree could have shaken them, and such a thing
was impossible just at that time.
From the line of Kennedy's questions I could see
that he believed that there was a hiatus somewhere in
their glib story, at least some point where some one
had tried to eradicate the marks of the poison.
“Here it is. We found it,” interrupted O'Connor,
holding up in his excitement a bottle covered with
black cloth to protect it from the light. “It was in
the back of a cabinet in the operating-room, and it
is marked “Ether phosphoré.” Another of oil of tur-
pentine was on a shelf in another cabinet. Both seem
to have been used lately, judging by the wetness of
the bottoms of the glass stoppers.”
“Ether phosphoré, phosphorated ether,” com-
mented Kennedy, reading the label to himself. “A
remedy from the French Codex, composed, if I re-
member rightly, of one part phosphorus and fifty
parts sulphuric ether. Phosphorus is often given as
a remedy for loss of nerve power, neuralgia, hysteria,
and melancholia. In quantities from a fiftieth to a
tenth or so of a grain free phosphorus is a renovator
of nerve tissue and nerve force, a drug for intense and
long-sustained anxiety of mind and protracted emo-
tional excitement—in short, for fast living.”
He uncorked the bottle, and we tasted the stuff.
It was unpleasant and nauseous. “I don’t see why


52 The Dream Doctor
it wasn’t used in the form of pills. The liquid form
of a few drops on gum arabic is hopelessly anti-
quated.”
The elevator door opened with a clang, and a well-
built, athletic looking man of middle age with an
acquired youngish look about his clothes and clean-
shaven face stepped out. His face was pale, and his
*and shook with emotion that showed that something
aad unstrung his usually cast-iron nerves. I recog-
mised Burke Collins at once.
In spite of his nervousness he strode forward with
the air of a man accustomed to being obeyed, to hav-
ing everything done for him merely because he, Burke
Collins, could afford to pay for it and it was his right.
He seemed to know whom he was seeking, for he im-
m diately singled out O'Connor.
... This is terrible, terrible,” he whispered hoarsely.
no, no, I don't want to see her. I can't, not yet.
Y inow I thought the world of that poor little girl.
Only,” and here the innate selfishness of the man
cropped out, “only I called to ask you that nothing
of my connection with her be given out. You under-
stand? Spare nothing to get at the truth. Employ
the best men you have. Get outside help if neces-
sary. I’ll pay for anything, anything. Perhaps I
can use some influence for you some day, too. But,
you understand—the scandal, you know. Not a word
to the newspapers.”
At another time I feel sure that O'Connor would
have succumbed. Collins was not without a great
deal of political influence, and even a first deputy may
be “broke” by a man with influence. But now here
44°


The Sybarite 53
was Kennedy, and he wished to appear in the best
light.
He looked at Craig. “Let me introduce Professor
Kennedy,” he said. “I’ve already called him in.”
“Very happy to have the pleasure of meeting you,”
said Collins, grasping Kennedy's hand warmly. “I
hope you will take me as your client in this case. I’ll
pay handsomely. I've always had a great admiral
tion for your work, and I’ve heard a great deal abou,
it.”
Kennedy is, if anything, as impervious to blandish-
ment as a stone, as the Blarney Stone is itself, for
instance. “On one condition,” he replied slowly,
“and that is that I go ahead exactly as if I were em-
ployed by the city itself to get at the truth.”
Collins bit his lip. It was evident that he was not
accustomed to being met in this independent spi t-
“Very well,” he answered at last. “O'Connor is
called you in. Work for him and—well, you ki W,
if you need anything just draw on me for it. O-aly
if you can, keep me out of it. I’ll tell everything I
can to help you—but not to the newspapers.”
He beckoned us outside. “Those people in there,”
he nodded his head back in the direction of the Mille-
fleurs, “do you suspect them? By George, it does
look badly for them, doesn’t it, when you come to
think of it? Well, now, you see, I’m frank and con-
fidential about my relations with Blan—er—Miss
Blaisdell. I was at a big dinner with her last night
with a party of friends. I suppose she came here to
get straightened out. I hadn’t been able to get her
on the wire to-day, but at the theatre when I called


54 The Dream Doctor
up they told me what had happened, and I came right
over here. Now please remember, do everything, any-
thing but create a scandal. You realise what that N
would mean for me.”
Kennedy said nothing. He simply laid down on
the desk, piece by piece, the torn letter which he had
picked up from the basket, and beside it he spread
out the reply which Blanche had written.
“What?” gasped Collins as he read the torn letter.
“I send that? Why, man alive, you're crazy. Didn’t
I just tell you I hadn’t heard from her until I called
up the theatre just now?”
I could not make out whether he was lying or not
when he said that he had not sent the note. Kennedy
picked up a pen. “Please write the same thing as
you read in the note on this sheet of the Novella
paper. It will be all right. You have plenty of wit-
nesses to that.”
It must have irked Collins even to have his word
doubted, but Kennedy was no respecter of persons.
He took the pen and wrote.
“I’ll keep your name out of it as much as possible,”
remarked Kennedy, glancing intently at the writing
and blotting it.
“Thank you,” said Collins simply, for once in his
life at a loss for words. Once more he whispered to
O'Connor, then he excused himself. The man was
so obviously sincere, I felt, as far as his selfish and
sensual limitations would permit, that I would not
have blamed Kennedy for giving him much more en-
couragement than he had given.
Kennedy was not through yet, and now turned


The Sybarite 55
quickly again to the cosmetic arcadia which had been
so rudely stirred by the tragedy.
“Who is this girl Agnes who discovered Miss Blais-
dell?” he shot out at the Millefleurs.
The beauty-doctor was now really painful in his
excitement. Like his establishment, even his feelings
were artificial.
“Agnes?” he repeated. “Why, she was one of
Madame's best hair-dressers. See—my dear—show
the gentlemen the book of engagements.”
It was a large book full of girls’ names, each an
expert in curls, puffs, “reinforcements,” hygienic
rolls, transformators, and the numberless other things
that made the fearful and wonderful hair-dresses of
the day. Agnes's dates were full, for a day ahead.
Kennedy ran his eye over the list of patrons. “Mrs.
Burke Collins, 3:30," he read. “Was she a patron,
too?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Madame. “She used to come
here three times a week. It was not vanity. We all
knew her, and we all liked her.”
Instantly I could read between the lines, and I felt
that I had been too charitable to Burke Collins. Here
was the wife slaving to secure that beauty which would
win back the man with whom she had worked and
toiled in the years before they came to New York and
success. The “other woman” came here, too, but for
a very different reason.
Nothing but business seemed to impress Millefleur,
however. “Oh, yes,” he volunteered, “we have a fine
, class. Among my own patients I have Hugh Dayton,
the actor, you know, leading man in Blanche Blais-


56 The Dream Doctor
dell’s company. He is having his hair restored.
Why, I gave him a treatment this afternoon. If ever
there is a crazy man, it is he. I believe he would kill
Mr. Collins for the way Blanche Blaisdell treats him.
They were engaged—but, oh, well,” he gave a very
good imitation of a French shrug, “it is all over now.
Neither of them will get her, and I-I am ruined.
Who will come to the Novella now?”
Adjoining Millefleur's own room was the writing-
room from which the poisoned envelope had been
taken to Miss Blaisdell. Over the little secretary
was the sign, “No woman need be plain who will visit
the Novella,” evidently the motto of the place. The
hair-dressing room was next to the little writing-room.
There were manicure rooms, steam-rooms, massage-
rooms, rooms of all descriptions, all bearing mute tes-
timony to the fundamental instinct, the feminine long-
ing for personal beauty.
Though it was late when Kennedy had finished his
investigation, he insisted on going directly to his lab-
oratory. There he pulled out from a corner a sort
of little square table on which was fixed a powerful
light such as might be used for a stereopticon.
“This is a simple little machine,” he explained, as
he pasted together the torn bits of the letter which
he had fished out of the scrap-basket, “which detec-
tives use in studying forgeries. I don’t know that it
has a name, although it might be called a ‘rayograph.”
You see, all you have to do is to lay the thing you wish
to study flat here, and the system of mirrors and lenses
reflects it and enlarges it on a sheet.”
He had lowered a rolled-up sheet of white at the


The Sybarite 57
opposite end of the room, and there, in huge char-
acters, stood forth plainly the writing of the note.
“This letter,” he resumed, studying the enlarge-
ment carefully, “is likely to prove crucial. It's very
queer. Collins says he didn’t write it, and if he did
he surely is a wonder at disguising his hand. I doubt
if any one could disguise what the rayograph shows.
Now, for instance, this is very important. Do you
see how those strokes of the long letters are—well,
wobbly? You’d never see that in the original, but
when it is enlarged you see how plainly visible the
tremors of the hand become? Try as you may, you
can’t conceal them. The fact is that the writer of
this note suffered from a form of heart disease. Now
let us look at the copy that Collins made at the No-
Wella.”
He placed the copy on the table of the rayograph.
It was quite evident that the two had been written
by entirely different persons. “I thought he was tell-
ing the truth,” commented Craig, “by the surprised
look on his face the moment I mentioned the note
to Miss Blaisdell. Now I know he was. There is no
such evidence of heart trouble in his writing as in
the other. Of course that’s all aside from what a
study of the handwriting itself might disclose. They
are not similar at all. But there is an important
clue there. Find the writer of that note who has
heart trouble, and we either have the murderer or
Some one close to the murderer.”
I remembered the tremulousness of the little
beauty-doctor, his third-rate artificial acting of fear
for the reputation of the Novella, and I must confess


38 The Dream Doctor
I agreed with O'Connor and Collins that it looked
black for him. At one time I had suspected Collins
himself, but now I could see perfectly why he had
not concealed his anxiety to hush up his connection
with the case, while at the same time his instinct as
a lawyer, and I had almost added, lover, told him
that justice must be done. I saw at once how, ac-
customed as he was to weigh evidence, he had im-
mediately seen the justification for O'Connor's arrest
of the Millefleurs. -
“More than that,” added Kennedy, after examining
the fibres of the paper under a microscope, “all these
notes are written on the same kind of paper. That
first torn note to Miss Blaisdell was written right in
the Novella and left so as to seem to have been sent
in from outside.”
It was early the following morning when Kennedy
roused me with the remark: “I think I'll go up to
the hospital. Do you want to come along? We’ll
stop for Barron on the way. There is a little ex-
periment I want to try on that girl up there.”
When we arrived, the nurse in charge of the ward
told us that her patient had passed a fairly good night,
but that now that the influence of the drug had worn
off she was again restless and still repeating the
words that she had said over and over before. Nor
had she been able to give any clearer account of her-
self. Apparently she had been alone in the city, for
although there was a news item about her in the morn-
ing papers, so far no relative or friend had called to
identify her. .
Kennedy had placed himself directly before her, lis-


The Sybarite 59
tening intently to her ravings. Suddenly he managed
to fix her eye, as if by a sort of hypnotic influence.
“Agnes!” he called in a sharp tone.
The name seemed to arrest her fugitive attention.
Before she could escape from his mental grasp again
he added: “Your date-book is full. Aren’t you going
to the Novella this morning?”
The change in her was something wonderful to see.
It was as though she had come out of a trance. She
sat up in bed and gazed about blankly.
“Yes, yes, I must go,” she cried as if it were the
most natural thing in the world. Then she realised
the strange surroundings and faces. “Where is my
hat—wh-where am I? What has happened?”
“You are all right,” soothed Kennedy gently.
“Now rest. Try to forget everything for a little while,
and you will be all right. You are among friends.”
As Kennedy led us out she fell back, now physically
exhausted, on the pillow.
“I told you, Barron,” he whispered, “that there was
more to this case than you imagined. Unwittingly
you brought me a very important contribution to a
case of which the papers are full this morning, the
case of the murdered actress, Blanche Blaisdell.”


IV.
The Beauty Shop
T was only after a few hours that Kennedy thought
it wise to try to question the poor girl at the hos-
pital. Her story was simple enough in itself, but it
certainly complicated matters considerably without
throwing much light on the case. She had been busy
because her day was full, and she had yet to dress
the hair of Miss Blaisdell for her play that night.
Several times she had been interrupted by impatient
messages from the actress in her little dressing-booth,
and one of the girls had already demolished the previ-
ous hair-dressing in order to save time. Once Agnes
had run down for a few seconds to reassure her that
she would be through in time.
She had found the actress reading a newspaper,
and when Kennedy questioned her she remembered
seeing a note lying on the dresser. “Agnes,” Miss
Blaisdell had said, “will you go into the writing-room
and bring me some paper, a pen, and ink? I don't
want to go in there this way. There's a dear good
girl.” Agnes had gone, though it was decidedly no
part of her duty as one of the highest paid employés
of the Novella. But they all envied the popular
actress, and were ready to do anything for her. The
next thing she remembered was finishing the coiffure
she was working on and going to Miss Blaisdell.
60


The Beauty Shop 61
There lay the beautiful actress. The light in the cor-
ridor had not been lighted yet, and it was dark. Her
lips and mouth seemed literally to shine. Agnes
called her, but she did not move; she touched her, but
she was cold. Then she screamed and fled. That
was the last she remembered.
“The little writing-room,” reasoned Kennedy as we
left the poor little hair-dresser quite exhausted by her
narrative, “was next to the sanctum of Millefleur,
where they found that bottle of ether phosphoré and
the oil of turpentine. Some one who knew of that
note or perhaps wrote it must have reasoned that an
answer would be written immediately. That person
figured that the note would be the next thing written
and that the top envelope of the pile would be used.
That person knew of the deadly qualities of too much
phosphorised ether, and painted the gummed flap of
the envelope with several grains of it. The reason-
ing held good, for Agnes took the top envelope with
its poisoned flap to Miss Blaisdell. No, there was
no chance about that. It was all clever, quick rea-
soning.”
“But,” I objected, “how about the oil of turpen-
tine?”
“Simply to remove the traces of the poison. I
think you will see why that was attempted before we
get through.” r
Kennedy would say no more, but I was content'
because I could see that he was now ready to put his
theories, whatever they were, to the final test. He
“pent the rest of the day working at the hospital with
#Jr. Barron, adjusting a very delicate piece of ap-


62 The Dream Doctor
paratus down in a special room in the basement. I
saw it, but I had no idea what it was or what its use
might be.
Close to the wall was a stereopticon which shot
a beam of light through a tube to which I heard them
refer as a galvanometer, about three feet distant. In
front of this beam whirled a five-spindled wheel, gov-
erned by a chronometer which erred only a second
a day. Between the poles of the galvanometer was
stretched a slender thread of fused quartz plated with
silver, only one one-thousandth of a millimetre in
diameter, so tenuous that it could not be seen except
in a bright light. It was a thread so slender that it
might have been spun by a miscroscopic spider.
Three feet farther away was a camera with a mov-
ing film of sensitised material, the turning of which
was regulated by a little flywheel. The beam of light
focused on the thread in the galvanometer passed to
the photographic film, intercepted only by the five
spindles of the wheel, which turned once a second,
thus marking the picture off into exact fifths of a
second. The vibrations of the microscopic quartz
thread were enormously magnified on the sensitive
film by a lens and resulted in producing a long zig-
zag, wavy line. The whole was shielded by a wooden
hood which permitted no light, except the slender
ray, to strike it. The film revolved slowly across the
field, its speed regulated by the flywheel, and all
moved by an electric motor.
I was quite surprised, then, when Kennedy told
me that the final tests which he was arranging were
not to be held at the hospital at all, but in his labor-


The Beauty Shop 63
atory, the scene of so many of his scientific triumphs
over the cleverest of criminals.
While he and Dr. Barron were still fussing with
the machine he despatched me on the rather ticklish
errand of gathering together all those who had been
at the Novella at the time and might possibly prove
important in the case.
My first visit was to Hugh Dayton, whom I found
in his bachelor apartment on Madison Avenue, ap-
parently waiting for me. One of O'Connor's men
had already warned him that any attempt to evade
putting in an appearance when he was wanted would
be of no avail. He had been shadowed from the mo-
ment that it was learned that he was a patient of
Millefleur's and had been at the Novella that fatal
afternoon. He seemed to realise that escape was im-
possible. Dayton was one of those typical young fel-
lows, tall, with sloping shoulders and a carefully ac-
quired English manner, whom one sees in scores on
Fifth Avenue late in the afternoon. His face, which
on the stage was forceful and attractive, was not pre-
possessing at close range. Indeed it showed too evi-
dent marks of excesses, both physical and moral, and
his hand was none too steady. Still, he was an in-
teresting personality, if not engaging.
I was also charged with delivering a note to Burke
Collins at his office. The purport of it was, I knew,
a request couched in language that veiled a summons
that Mrs. Collins was of great importance in getting
at the truth, and that if he needed an excuse himself
for being present it was suggested that he appear as
protecting his wife's interests as a lawyer. Kennedy


64 The Dream Doctor
had added that I might tell him orally that he would
pass over the scandal as lightly as possible and spare
the feelings of both as much as he could. I was
rather relieved when this mission was accomplished,
for I had expected Collins to demur violently. -
Those who gathered that night, sitting expectantly
in the little armchairs which Kennedy's students
used during his lectures, included nearly every one
who could cast any light on what had happened at
the Novella. Professor and Madame Millefleur were
brought up from the house of detention, to which both
O'Connor and Dr. Leslie had insisted that they be
sent. Millefleur was still bewailing the fate of the
Novella, and Madame had begun to show evidences
of lack of the constant beautification which she was
always preaching as of the utmost importance to her
patrons. Agnes was so far recovered as to be able
to be present, though I noticed that she avoided the
Millefleurs and sat as far from them as possible.
Burke Collins and Mrs. Collins arrived together.
I had expected that there would be an icy coolness
if not positive enmity between them. They were not
exactly cordial, though somehow I seemed to feel that
now that the cause of estrangement was removed a
tactful mutual friend might have brought about a
reconciliation. Hugh Dayton swaggered in, his nerv-
ousness gone or at least controlled. I passed behind
him once, and the odour that smote my olfactory sense
told me too plainly that he had fortified himself with
a stimulant on his way from the apartment to the
laboratory. Of course O'Connor and Dr. Leslie were
there, though in the background.


The Beauty Shop 65
It was a silent gathering, and Kennedy did not
attempt to relieve the tension even by small talk as
he wrapped the forearms of each of us with cloths
steeped in a solution of salt. Upon these cloths he
placed little plates of German silver to which were
attached wires which led back of a screen. At last
he was ready to begin.
“The long history of science,” he began as he
emerged from behind the screen, “is filled with in-
stances of phenomena, noted at first only for their
beauty or mystery, which have been later proved to
be of great practical value to mankind. A new ex-
ample is the striking phenomenon of luminescence.
Phosphorus, discovered centuries ago, was first
merely a curiosity. Now it is used for many prac-
tical things, and one of the latest uses is as a medi-
cine. It is a constituent of the body, and many
doctors believe that the lack of it causes, and that
its presence will cure, many ills. But it is a viru-
lent and toxic drug, and no physician except one who
knows his business thoroughly should presume to
handle it. Whoever made a practice of using it at
the Novella did not know his business, or he would
have used it in pills instead of in the nauseous liquid.
It is not with phosphorised ether as a medicine that
we have to deal in this case. It is with the stuff as
a poison, a poison administered by a demon.”
Craig shot the word out so that it had its full ef-
fect on his little audience. Then he paused, lowered
his voice, and resumed on a new subject.
“Up in the Washington Heights Hospital,” he went
on, “is an apparatus which records the secrets of the


66 The Dream Doctor
human heart. That is no figure of speech, but a cold
scientific fact. This machine records every variation
of the pulsations of the heart with such exquisite ac-
curacy that it gives Dr. Barron, who is up there now,
not merely a diagram of the throbbing organ of each
of you seated here in my laboratory a mile away, but
a sort of moving-picture of the emotions by which
each heart here is swayed. Not only can Dr. Barron
diagnose disease, but he can detect love, hate, fear,
joy, anger, and remorse. This machine is known as
the Einthoven ‘string galvanometer,’ invented by that
famous Dutch physiologist of Leyden.”
There was a perceptible movement in our little audi-
ence at the thought that the little wires that ran back
of the screen from the arms of each were connected
with this uncanny instrument so far away.
“It is all done by the electric current that the heart
itself generates,” pursued Kennedy, hammering home
the new and startling idea. “That current is one of
the feeblest known to science, for the dynamo that
generates it is no ponderous thing of copper wire and
steel castings. It is just the heart itself. The heart
sends over the wire its own telltale record to the ma-
chine which registers it. The thing takes us all the
way back to Galvani, who was the first to observe
and study animal electricity. The heart makes only
one three-thousandth of a volt of electricity at each
beat. It would take over two hundred thousand men
to light one of these incandescent lamps, two million
or more to run a trolley-car. Yet just that slight
little current is enough to sway the gossamer strand
ef quartz fibre up there at what we call the “heart


The Beauty Shop 67
r
station.” So fine is this machine that the pulse-trac-
ings produced by the sphygmograph, which I have
used in other cases up to this time, are clumsy and in-
exact.”
Again he paused as if to let the fear of discovery
sink deep into the minds of all of us.
“This current, as I have said, passes from each one
of you in turn over a wire and vibrates a fine quartz
fibre up there in unison with each heart here. It is
one of the most delicate bits of mechanism ever made,
beside which the hairspring of a watch is coarse.
Each of you in turn, is being subjected to this test.
More than that, the record up there shows not only
the beats of the heart but the successive waves of
emotion that vary the form of those beats. Every
normal individual gives what we call an ‘electro-
cardiogram, which follows a certain type. The
photographic film on which this is being recorded is
ruled so that at the heart station Dr. Barron can read
it. There are five waves to each heart-beat, which
he letters P, Q, R, S, and T, two below and three
above a base line on the film. They have all been
found to represent a contraction of a certain portion
of the heart. Any change of the height, width, or
time of any one of those lines shows that there is some
defect or change in the contraction of that part of
the heart. Thus Dr. Barron, who has studied this
thing carefully, can tell infallibly not only disease
but emotion.”
It seemed as if no one dared look at his neighbour,
as if all were trying vainly to control the beating of
their own hearts.


68 The Dream Doctor
“Now,” concluded Kennedy solemnly as if to force
the last secret from the wildly beating heart of some
one in the room, “it is my belief that the person who
had access to the operating-room of the Novella was
a person whose nerves were run down, and in addi-
tion to any other treatment that person was familiar
with the ether phosphoré. This person knew Miss
Blaisdell well, saw her there, knew she was there for
the purpose of frustrating that person's own dearest
hopes. That person wrote her the note, and knowing
that she would ask for paper and an envelope in order
to answer it, poisoned the flap of the envelope.
Phosphorus is a remedy for hysteria, vexatious emo-
tions, want of sympathy, disappointed and concealed
affections—but not in the quantities that this person
lavished on that flap. Whoever it was, not life, but
death, and a ghastly death, was uppermost in that
person's thoughts.”
Agnes screamed. “I saw him take something and
rub it on her lips, and the brightness went away. I
—I didn’t mean to tell, but, God help me, I must.”
“Saw whom?” demanded Kennedy, fixing her eye
as he had when he had called her back from aphasia.
“Him—Millefleur-Miller,” she sobbed, shrinking
back as if the very confession appalled her.
“Yes,” added Kennedy coolly, “Miller did try to
remove the traces of the poison after he discovered
it, in order to protect himself and the reputation of
the Novella.”
The telephone bell tinkled. Craig seized the re-
ceiver.
“Yes, Barron, this is Kennedy. You received the


The Beauty Shop 69
impulses all right? Good. And have you had time
to study the records? Yes? What's that? Number
seven? All right. I’ll see you very soon and go over
the records again with you. Good-bye.”
“One word more,” he continued, now facing us.
“The normal heart traces its throbs in regular
rhythm. The diseased or overwrought heart throbs
in degrees of irregularity that vary according to the
trouble that affects it, both organic and emotional.
The expert like Barron can tell what each wave
means, just as he can tell what the lines in a spec-
trum mean. He can see the invisible, hear the in-
audible, feel the intangible, with mathematical pre-
cision. Barron has now read the electro-cardiograms.
Each is a picture of the beating of the heart that made
it, and each smallest variation has a meaning to him.
JEvery passion, every emotion, every disease, is re-
corded with inexorable truth. The person with mur-
der in his heart cannot hide it from the string gal-
vanometer, nor can that person who wrote the false
note in which the very lines of the letters betray a
diseased heart hide that disease. The doctor tells me
that that person was number—”
Mrs. Collins had risen wildly and was standing be-
fore us with blazing eyes. “Yes,” she cried, pressing
her hands on her breast as if it were about to burst
and tell the secret before her lips could frame the
words, “yes, I killed her, and I would follow her to
the end of the earth if I had not succeeded. She was
there, the woman who had stolen from me what was
more than life itself. Yes, I wrote the note, I poi-
soned the envelope. I killed her.”


70 The Dream Doctor
All the intense hatred that she had felt for that
other woman in the days that she had vainly striven
to equal her in beauty and win back her husband’s
love broke forth. She was wonderful, magnificent,
in her fury. She was passion personified; she was
fate, retribution.
Collins looked at his wife, and even he felt the spell.
It was not crime that she had done; it was elemental
justice.
For a moment she stood, silent, facing Kennedy.
Then the colour slowly faded from her cheeks. She
reeled.
Collins caught her and imprinted a kiss, the kiss
that for years she had longed and striven for again.
She looked rather than spoke forgiveness as he held
her and showered them on her.
“Before Heaven,” I heard him whisper into her
ear, “with all my power as a lawyer I will free you
from this.”
Gently Dr. Leslie pushed him aside and felt her
pulse as she dropped limply into the only easy chair
in the laboratory.
“O’Connor,” he said at length, “all the evidence
that we really have hangs on an invisible thread of
quartz a mile away. If Professor Kennedy agrees,
let us forget what has happened here to-night. I will
direct my jury to bring in a verdict of suicide. Col-
lins, take good care of her.” He leaned over and
whispered so she could not hear. “I wouldn’t prom-
ise her six weeks otherwise.”
I could not help feeling deeply moved as the newly
reunited Collinses left the laboratory together. Even


The Beauty Shop 71
the bluff deputy, O'Connor, was touched by it and
under the circumstances did what seemed to him his
higher duty with a tact of which I had believed him
scarcely capable. Whatever the ethics of the case,
he left it entirely to Dr. Leslie's coroner's jury to
determine.
Burke Collins was already making hasty prepara-
tions for the care of his wife so that she might have
the best medical attention to prolong her life for
the few weeks or months before nature exacted the
penalty which was denied the law.
“That's a marvellous piece of apparatus,” I re-
marked, standing over the connections with the string
galvanometer, after all had gone. “Just suppose the
case had fallen into the hands of some of these old-
fashioned detectives—”
“I hate post-mortems—on my own cases,” inter-
rupted Kennedy brusquely. “To-morrow will be time
enough to clear up this mess. Meanwhile, let us get
this thing out of our minds.”
He clapped his hat on his head decisively and de-
liberately walked out of the laboratory, starting off
at a brisk pace in the moonlight across the campus
to the avenue where now the only sound was the noisy
rattle of an occasional trolley car.
How long we walked I do not know. But I do
Know that for genuine relaxation after a long period
of keen mental stress, there is nothing like physical
exercise. We turned into our apartment, roused the
sleepy hall-boy, and rode up. -
“I suppose people think I never rest,” remarked
Kennedy, carefully avoiding any reference to the ex-


72 The Dream Doctor
º
citing events of the past two days. “But I do. Like
every one else, I have to. When I am working hard
on a case—well, I have my own violent reaction
against it—more work of a different kind. Others
choose white lights, red wines and blue feelings after-
wards. But I find, when I reach that state, that
the best anti-toxin is something that will chase the
last case from your brain by getting you in trim for
the next unexpected event.” -
He had sunk into an easy chair where he was run-
ning over in his mind his own plans for the morrow.
“Just now I must recuperate by doing no work at
all,” he went on slowly undressing. “That walk was
just what I needed. When the fever of dissipation
comes on again, I’ll call on you. You won’t miss any-
thing, Walter.”
Like the famous Finnegan, however, he was on
again and gone again in the morning. This time I
had no misgivings, although I should have liked to
accompany him, for on the library table he had
scrawled a little note, “Studying East Side to-day.
Will keep in touch with you. Craig.”
My daily task of transcribing my notes was com-
pleted and I thought I would run down to the Star
to let the editor know how I was getting along on
my assignment.
I had scarcely entered the door when the office boy
thrust a message into my hand. It stopped me even
before I had a chance to get as far as my own desk.
It was from Kennedy at the laboratory and bore a
time stamp that showed that it must have been re-
ceived only a few minutes before I came in.
*.
* *


". - The Beauty Shop - 73
“Meet me at the Grand Central,” it read, “immedi-
ately.”
Without going further into the office, I turned and
dropped down in the elevator to the subway. As
quickly as an express could take me, I hurried up to
the new station.
“Where away?” I asked breathlessly, as Craig met
me at the entrance through which he had reasoned I
would come. “The coast or Down East?”
“Woodrock,” he replied quickly, taking my arm
and dragging me down a ramp to the train that was
just leaving for that fashionable suburb.
“Well,” I queried eagerly, as the train started.
“Why all this secrecy?”
“I had a caller this afternoon,” he began, running
his eye over the other passengers to see if we were
observed. “She is going back on this train. I am
not to recognise her at the station, but you and I are
to walk to the end of the platform and enter a limou-
sine bearing that number.”
He produced a card on the back of which was writ-
ten a number in six figures. Mechanically I glanced
at the name as he handed the card to me. Craig was
watching intently the expression on my face as I read,
“Miss Yvonne Brixton.”
“Since when were you admitted into society?” I
gasped, still staring at the name of the daughter of
the millionaire banker, John Brixton.
“She came to tell me that her father is in a virtual
state of siege, as it were, up there in his own house,”
explained Kennedy in an undertone, “so much so
that, apparently, she is the only person he felt he


74 The Dream Doctor
dared trust with a message to summon me. Prac-
tically everything he says or does is spied on; he can't
even telephone without what he says being known.”
“Siege?” I repeated incredulously. “Impossible.
Why, only this morning I was reading about his ne-
gotiations with a foreign syndicate of bankers from
southeastern Europe for a ten-million-dollar loan to
relieve the money stringency there. Surely there
must be some mistake in all this. In fact, as I recall
it, one of the foreign bankers who is trying to in-
terest him is that Count Wachtmann who, everybody
says, is engaged to Miss Brixton, and is staying at
the house at Woodrock. Craig, are you sure nobody
is hoaxing you?”
“Read that,” he replied laconically, handing me a
piece of thin letter-paper such as is often used for
foreign correspondence. “Such letters have been
coming to Mr. Brixton, I understand, every day.”
The letter was in a cramped foreign scrawl:
JoBN BRIxTon,
Woodrock, New York.
American dollars must not endanger the peace of Europe. Be
warned in time. In the name of liberty and progress we have
raised the standard of conflict without truce or quarter against
reaction. If you and the American bankers associated with you
take up these bonds you will never live to receive the first pay-
ment Of interest.
THE RED BROTHERHOOD OF THE BALKANS.
I looked up inquiringly. “What is the Red
Brotherhood?” I asked.
“As nearly as I can make out,” replied Kennedy,
“it seems to be a sort of international secret society.


The Beauty Shop 75
I believe it preaches the gospel of terror and violence
in the cause of liberty and union of some of the peo-
ples of southeastern Europe. Anyhow, it keeps its
secrets well. The identity of the members is a mys-
tery, as well as the source of its funds, which, it is
said, are immense.”
“And they operate so secretly that Brixton can
trust no one about him?” I asked.
“I believe he is ill,” explained Craig. “At any rate,
he evidently suspects almost every one about him ex-
cept his daughter. As nearly as I could gather, how-
ever, he does not suspect Wachtmann himself. Miss
Brixton seemed to think that there were some enemies
of the Count at work. Her father is a secretive man.
Even to her, the only message he would entrust was
that he wanted to see me immediately.”
At Woodrock we took our time in getting off the
train. Miss Brixton, a tall, dark-haired, athletic girl
just out of college, had preceded us, and as her own
car shot out from the station platform we leisurely
walked down and entered another bearing the num-
ber she had given Kennedy.
We seemed to be expected at the house. Hardly
had we been admitted through the door from the
porte-cochère, than we were led through a hall to a
library at the side of the house. From the library
we entered another door, then down a flight of steps
which must have brought us below an open court-
yard on the outside, under a rim of the terrace in
front of the house for a short distance to a point
where we descended three more steps.
At the head of these three steps was a great steel


76 The Dream Doctor
and iron door with heavy bolts and a combination
lock of a character ordinarily found only on a safe
in a banking institution.
The door was opened, and we descended the steps,
going a little farther in the same direction away from
the side of the house. Then we turned at a right
angle facing toward the back of the house but well
to one side of it. It must have been, I figured out
later, underneath the open courtyard. A few steps
farther brought us to a fair-sized, vaulted room.


V
The Phantom Circuit
RIXTON had evidently been waiting impatiently
for our arrival. “Mr. Kennedy?” he inquired,
adding quickly without waiting for an answer: “I
am glad to see you. I suppose you have noticed the
precautions we are taking against intruders? Yet
it seems to be all of no avail. I can not be alone
even here. If a telephone message comes to me over
my private wire, if I talk with my own office in the
city, it seems that it is known. I don’t know what
to make of it. It is terrible. I don’t know what to
expect next.”
Brixton had been standing beside a huge mahogany
desk as we entered. I had seen him before at a dis-
tance as a somewhat pompous speaker at banquets
and the cynosure of the financial district. But there
was something different about his looks now. He
seemed to have aged, to have grown yellower. Even
the whites of his eyes were yellow.
I thought at first that perhaps it might be the ef-
fect of the light in the centre of the room, a huge
affair set in the ceiling in a sort of inverted hemi-
sphere of glass, concealing and softening the rays of
a powerful incandescent bulb which it enclosed. It
Was not the light that gave him the altered appear-
ance, as I concluded from catching a casual confirma-
tory glance of perplexity from Kennedy himself.
77


78 The Dream Doctor
*
“My personal physician says I am suffering from
jaundice,” explained Brixton. Rather than seeming
to be offended at our notice of his condition he seemed
to take it as a good evidence of Kennedy’s keenness
that he had at once hit on one of the things that were
weighing on Brixton's own mind. “I feel pretty
badly, too. Curse it,” he added bitterly, “coming at
a time when it is absolutely necessary that I should
have all my strength to carry through a negotiation
that is only a beginning, important not so much for
myself as for the whole world. It is one of the first
times New York bankers have had a chance to en-
gage in big dealings in that part of the world. I sup-
pose Yvonne has shown you one of the letters I am
receiving?”
He rustled a sheaf of them which he drew from a
drawer of his desk, and continued, not waiting for
Kennedy even to nod:
“Here are a dozen or more of them. I get one
or two every day, either here or at my town house or
at the office.”
Kennedy had moved forward to see them.
“One moment more,” Brixton interrupted, still
holding them. “I shall come back to the letters.
That is not the worst. I’ve had threatening letters
before. Have you noticed this room?”
We had both seen and been impressed by it.
“Let me tell you more about it,” he went on. “It
was designed especially to be, among other things,
absolutely soundproof.”
We gazed curiously about the strong room. It
was beautifully decorated and furnished. On the


The Phantom Circuit 79
walls was a sort of heavy, velvety green wall-paper.
Exquisite hangings were draped about, and on the
floor wel e thick rugs. In all I noticed that the pre-
vailing tº t was green.
“I had periments carried out,” he explained lan-
guidly, “with the object of discovering methods and
means for rendering walls and ceilings capable of
effective resistance to sound transmission. One of
the methods devised involved the use under the ceil-
ing or parallel to the wall, as the case might be, of
a network of wire stretched tightly by means of pul-
leys in the adjacent walls and not touching at any
point the surface to be protected against sound.
Upon the wire network is plastered a composition
formed of strong glue, plaster of Paris, and granu-
lated cork, so as to make a flat slab, between which
and the wall or ceiling is a cushion of confined air.
The method is good in two respects: the absence of
contact between the protective and protected surfaces
and the colloid nature of the composition used. I
have gone into the thing at length because it will
make all the more remarkable what I am about to
tell you.”
Rennedy had been listening attentively. As Brix-
ton proceeded I had noticed Kennedy's nostrils di-
lating almost as if he were a hound and had scented
his quarry. I sniffed, too. Yes, there was a faint
Odour, almost as if of garlic in the room. It was un-
mistakable. Craig was looking about curiously, as
if to discover a window by which the odour might have
entered. Brixton, with his eyes following keenly
every move, noticed him.


80 The Dream Doctor
“More than that,” he added quickly, “I have had
the most perfect system of modern ventilation in-
stalled in this room, absolutely independent from
that in the house.”
Kennedy said nothing.
“A moment ago, Mr. Kennedy, I saw you and Mr.
Jameson glancing up at the ceiling. Sound-proof as
this room is, or as I believe it to be, I—I hear voices,
voices from—not through, you understand, but from
—that very ceiling. I do not hear them now. It is
only at certain times when I am alone. They repeat
the words in some of these letters—‘You must not
take up those bonds. You must not endanger the
peace of the world. You will never live to get the
interest.’ Over and over I have heard such sentences
spoken in this very room. I have rushed out and
up the corridor. There has been no one there. I
have locked the steel door. Still I have heard the
voices. And it is absolutely impossible that a human
being could get close enough to say them without my
knowing and finding out where he is.”
Kennedy betrayed by not so much as the motion
of a muscle even a shade of a doubt of Brixton’s in-
credible story. Whether because he believed it or
because he was diplomatic, Craig took the thing at
its face value. He moved a blotter so that he could
stand on the top of Brixton's desk in the centre of
the room. Then he unfastened and took down the
glass hemisphere over the light.
“It is an Osram lamp of about a hundred candle-
power, I should judge,” he observed.
Apparently he had satisfied himself that there was


82 The Dream Doctor
where this line feeding the Osram lamp passed near
a dark storeroom in a corner Craig examined more
closely than ever. Seemingly his search was re-
warded, for he dived into the dark storeroom and
commenced lighting matches furiously to discover
what was there.
“Look, Walter,” he exclaimed, holding a match so
that I could see what he had unearthed. There, in
a corner concealed by an old chest of drawers, stood
a battery of five storage-cells connected with an in-
strument that looked very much like a telephone
transmitter, a rheostat, and a small transformer coil.
“I suppose this is a direct-current lighting circuit,”
he remarked, thoughtfully regarding his find. “I
think I know what this is, all right. Any amateur
could do it, with a little knowledge of electricity and
a source of direct current. The thing is easily con-
structed, the materials are common, and a wonder-
fully complicated result can be obtained. What's
this?”
He had continued to poke about in the darkness as
he was speaking. In another corner he had discow-
ered two ordinary telephone receivers.
“Connected up with something, too, by George!”
he ejaculated.
Evidently some one had tapped the regular tele-
phone wires running into the house, had run exten-
sions into the little storeroom, and was prepared to
overhear everything that was said either to or by
those in the house. -
Further examination disclosed that there were two
separate telephone systems running into Brixton's


84 The Dream Doctor
“Count Wachtmann?” interrogated Kennedy, ris-
ing.
“The same,” he replied easily, with a glance of in-
Quiry at us.
“My friend and I are from the Star,” said Ken-
nedy. -
“Ah! Gentlemen of the press?” He elevated his
eyebrows the fraction of an inch. It was so politely
contemptuous that I could almost have throttled him.
“We are waiting to see Mr. Brixton,” explained
Kennedy.
“What is the latest from the Near East?” Wacht-
mann asked, with the air of a man expecting to hear
what he could have told you yesterday if he had
chosen.
There was a movement of the portières, and a
woman entered. She stopped a moment. I knew it
was Miss Brixton. She had recognised Kennedy, but
her part was evidently to treat him as a total stranger.
“Who are these men, Conrad?” she asked, turning
to Wachtmann.
“Gentlemen of the press, I believe, to see your
father, Yvonne,” replied the count.
It was evident that it had not been mere newspaper
talk about this latest rumored international engage-
ment.
“How did you enjoy it?” he asked, noticing the title
of a history which she had come to replace in the
library.
“Very well—all but the assassinations and the in-
trigues,” she replied with a little shudder.
He shot a quick, searching look at her face. “They


The Phantom Circuit 85
are a violent people—some of them,” he commented
quickly. -
“You are going into town to-morrow?” I heard him
ask Miss Brixton, as they walked slowly down the
wide hall to the conservatory a few moments later.
“What do you think of him?” I whispered to Ken-
nedy.
I suppose my native distrust of his kind showed
through, for Craig merely shrugged his shoulders.
Before he could reply Mr. Brixton joined us.
“There's another one—just came,” he ejaculated,
throwing a letter down on the library table. It was
only a few lines this time:
“The bonds will not be subject to a tax by the gov-
ernment, they say. No–because if there is a war
there won’t be any government to tax them."
The note did not appear to interest Kennedy as
much as what he had discovered. “One thing is self-
evident, Mr. Brixton,” he remarked. “Some one in-
side this house is spying, is in constant communica-
tion with a person or persons outside. All the watch-
men and Great Danes on the estate are of no avail
against the subtle, underground connection that I
believe exists. It is still early in the afternoon. I
shall make a hasty trip to New York and return after
dinner. I should like to watch with you in the den
this evening.”
“Very well,” agreed Brixton. “I shall arrange to
have you met at the station and brought here as se-
cretly as I can.”
He sighed, as if admitting that he was no longer
master of even his own house.


86 The Dream Doctor
Kennedy was silent during most of our return trip
to New York. As for myself, I was deeply mired in
an attempt to fathom Wachtmann. He baffled me.
However, I felt that if there was indeed some subtle,
underground connection between some one inside
and some one outside Brixton's house, Craig would
prepare an equally subtle method of meeting it on
his own account. Very little was said by either of
us on the journey up to the laboratory, or on the re-
turn to Woodrock. I realised that there was very
little excuse for a commuter not to be well informed.
I, at least, had plenty of time to exhaust the newspa-
pers I had bought.
Whether or not we returned without being ob-
served, I did not know, but at least we did find that
the basement and dark storeroom were deserted, as
we cautiously made our way again into the corner
where Craig had made his enigmatical discoveries
of the afternoon.
While I held a pocket flashlight Craig was busy
concealing another instrument of his own in the lit-
tle storeroom. It seemed to be a little black disk
about as big as a watch, with a number of perforated
holes in one face. Carelessly he tossed it into the
top drawer of the chest under some old rubbish, shut
the drawer tight and ran a flexible wire out of the
back of the chest. It was a simple matter to lay the
wire through some bins next the storeroom and then
around to the passageway down to the subterranean
den of Brixton. There Craig deposited a little black
box about the size of an ordinary kodak.
For an hour or so we sat with Brixton. Neither


The Phantom Circuit 87.
of us said anything, and Brixton was uncommuni-
catively engaged in reading a railroad report. Sud-
denly a sort of muttering, singing noise seemed to
fill the room.
“There it is!” cried Brixton, clapping the book shut
and looking eagerly at Kennedy.
Gradually the sound increased in pitch. It seemed
to come from the ceiling, not from any particular
part of the room, but merely from somewhere over-
head. There was no hallucination about it. We
all heard. As the vibrations increased it was
evident that they were shaping themselves into
Words.
Kennedy had grasped the black box the moment
the sound began and was holding two black rubber
disks to his ears.
At last the sound from overhead became articulate.
It was weird, uncanny. Suddenly a voice said dis-
tinctly: “Let American dollars beware. They will
not protect American daughters.”
Craig had dropped the two ear-pieces and was gaz-
ing intently at the Osram lamp in the ceiling. Was
he, too, crazy?
“Here, Mr. Brixton, take these two receivers of the
detectaphone,” said Kennedy. “Tell me whether
you can recognise the voice.”
“Why, it's familiar,” he remarked slowly. “I can’t
place it, but I’ve heard it before. Where is it?
What is this thing, anyhow?”
“It is some one hidden in the storeroom in the base-
ment,” answered Craig. “He is talking into a very
Sensitive telephone transmitter and—”


88 The Dream Doctor
“But the voice—here?” interrupted Brixton im-
patiently. -
Kennedy pointed to the incandescent lamp in the
ceiling. “The incandescent lamp,” he said, “is not
always the mute electrical apparatus it is supposed
to be. Under the right conditions it can be made to
speak exactly as the famous ‘speaking-arc,’ as it was
called by Professor Duddell, who investigated it.
Both the arc-light and the metal-filament lamp can
be made to act as telephone receivers.”
It seemed unbelievable, but Kennedy was positive.
“In the case of the speaking-arc or ‘arcophone,’ as it
might be called,” he continued, “the fact that the elec-
tric arc is sensitive to such small variations in the
current over a wide range of frequency has suggested
that a direct-current arc might be used as a telephone
receiver. All that is necessary is to superimpose a
microphone current on the main arc current, and the
arc reproduces sounds and speech distinctly, loud
enough to be heard several feet. Indeed, the arc
could be used as a transmitter, too, if a sensitive
receiver replaced the transmitter at the other end.
The things needed are an arc-lamp, an impedance
coil, or small transformer-coil, a rheostat, and a
source of energy. The alternating current is not
adapted to reproduce speech, but the ordinary direct
current is. Of course, the theory isn't half as simple
as the apparatus I have described.”
He had unscrewed the Osram lamp. The talking
ceased immediately.
“Two investigators named Ort and Ridger have
used a lamp like this as a receiver,” he continued.


The Phantom Circuit 89
“They found that words spoken were reproduced in
the lamp. The telephonic current variations super-
posed on the current passing through the lamp pro-
duce corresponding variations of heat in the filament,
which are radiated to the glass of the bulb, causing
it to expand and contract proportionately, and thus
transmitting vibrations to the exterior air. Of
course, in sixteen- and thirty-two-candle-power lamps
the glass is too thick, and the heat variations are too
feeble.”
Who was it whose voice Brixton had recognised as
familiar over Kennedy's hastily installed detecta-
phone? Certainly he must have been a scientist of
no mean attainment. That did not surprise me, for
I realised that from that part of Europe where this
mystical Red Brotherhood operated some of the most
famous scientists of the world had sprung.
A hasty excursion into the basement netted us noth-
ing. The place was deserted.
We could only wait. With parting instructions
to Brixton in the use of the detectaphone we said
good night, were met by a watchman and escorted as
far as the lodge safely.
Only one remark did Kennedy make as we settled
ourselves for the long ride in the accommodation
train to the city. “That warning means that we have
two people to protect—both Brixton and his daugh-
ter.”
Speculate as I might, I could find no answer to the
mystery, nor to the question, which was also unsolved,
as to the queer malady of Brixton himself, which his
physician diagnosed as jaundice.


VI
The Detectaphone
AR after midnight though it had been when we
had at last turned in at our apartment, Ken-
nedy was up even earlier than usual in the morning.
I found him engrossed in work at the laboratory.
“Just in time to see whether I’m right in my guess
about the illness of Brixton,” he remarked, scarcely
looking up at me.
He had taken a flask with a rubber stopper.
Through one hole in it was fitted a long funnel;
through another ran a glass tube, connecting with a
large U-shaped drying-tube filled with calcium chlo-
ride, which in turn connected with a long open tube
with an up-turned end.
Into the flask Craig dropped some pure granulated
zinc coated with platinum. Then he covered it with
dilute sulphuric acid through the funnel tube.
“That forms hydrogen gas,” he explained, “which
passes through the drying-tube and the ignition-tube.
Wait a moment until all the air is expelled from the
tubes.”
He lighted a match and touched it to the open up-
turned end. The hydrogen, now escaping freely, was
ignited with a pale-blue flame.
Next, he took the little piece of wall-paper I had
seen him tear off in the den, scraped off some powder
90


The Detectaphone 91.
from it, dissolved it, and poured it into the funnel-
tube.
Almost immediately the pale, bluish flame turned
to bluish white, and white fumes were formed. In
the ignition-tube a sort of metallic deposit appeared.
Quickly he made one test after another. I sniffed.
There was an unmistakable smell of garlic in the air.
“Arseniureted hydrogen,” commented Craig.
“This is the Marsh test for arsenic. That wall-pa-
per in Brixton's den has been loaded down with ar-
senic, probably Paris green or Schweinfurth green,
which is aceto-arsenite of copper. Every minute he
is there he is breathing arseniureted hydrogen. Some
one has contrived to introduce free hydrogen into
the intake of his ventilator. That acts on the arsenic
compounds in the wall-paper and, hangings and sets
free the gas. I thought I knew the smell the moment
I got a whiff of it. Besides, I could tell by the jaun-
diced look of his face that he was being poisoned.
His liver was out of order, and arsenic seems to ac-
cumulate in the liver.”
“Slowly poisoned by minute quantities of gas,” I
repeated in amazement. “Some one in that Red
Brotherhood is a diabolical genius. Think of it—
poisoned wall-paper!”
It was still early in the forenoon when Kennedy
excused himself, and leaving me to my own devices
disappeared on one of his excursions into the under-
world of the foreign settlements on the East Side.
About the middle of the afternoon he reappeared.
As far as I could learn all that he had found out was
that the famous, or rather infamous, Professor Mi-
---


The Detectaphone 93
talking through an incandescent lamp seeing, even
through steel and masonry, was not impossible.
Kennedy had brought with him a rectangular box
of oak, in one of the large faces of which were two
square holes. As he replaced the black camera-like
box of the detectaphone with this oak box he re-
marked: “This is an intercommunicating telephone
arrangement of the detectaphone. You see, it is
more sensitive than anything of the sort ever made
before. The arrangement of these little square holes
is such as to make them act as horns or magnifiers of
a double receiver. We can all hear at once what is
going on by using this machine.”
We had not been waiting long before a peculiar
noise seemed to issue from the detectaphone. It was
as though a door had been opened and shut hastily.
Some one had evidently entered the storeroom. A
voice called up the railroad station and asked for
Michael Kronski, Count Wachtmann's chauffeur.
“It is the voice I heard last night,” exclaimed Brix-
ton. “By the Lord Harry, do you know, it is Janeff
the engineer who has charge of the steam heating, the
electric bells, and everything of the sort around the
place. My own engineer—I’ll land the fellow in jail
before I’ll—”
Kennedy raised his hand. “Let us hear what he
Thas to say,” remonstrated Craig calmly. “I suppose
you have wondered why I didn’t just go down there
last night and grab the fellow. Well, you see now.
It is my invariable rule to get the man highest up.
This fellow is only one tool. Arrest him, and as


94 The Dream Doctor
likely as not we should allow the big criminal to es-
cape.”
“Hello, Kronski!” came over the detectaphone.
“This is Janeff. How are things going?”
Wachtmann’s chauffeur must have answered that
everything was all right.
“You knew that they had discovered the poisoned
wall-paper?” asked Janeff.
A long parley followed. Finally, Janeff repeated
what apparently had been his instructions. “Now,
let me see,” he said. “You want me to stay here un-
til the last minute so that I can overhear whether any
alarm is given for her? All right. You're sure it
is the nine-o'clock train she is due on? Very well.
I shall meet you at the ferry across the Hudson. I’ll
start from here as soon as I hear the train come in.
We'll get the girl this time. That will bring Brix-
ton to terms sure. You're right. Even if we fail
this time, we'll succeed later. Don’t fail me. I’ll
be at the ferry as soon as I can get past the guards
and join you. There isn’t a chance of an alarm from
the house. I’ll cut all the wires the last thing before
I leave. Good-bye.”
All at once it dawned on me what they were plan-
ning—the kidnapping of Brixton's only daughter, to
hold her, perhaps, as a hostage until he did the bid-
ding of the gang. Wachtmann's chauffeur was do
ing it and using Wachtmann's car, too. Was Wacht-
mann a party to it?
What was to be done? I looked at my watch. It
was already only a couple of minutes of nine, when
the train would be due.


The Detectaphone 95
“If we could seize that fellow in the closet and start
for the station immediately we might save Yvonne,”
cried Brixton, starting for the door.
“And if they escape you make them more eager
than ever to strike a blow at you and yours,” put in
Craig coolly. “No, let us get this thing straight. I
didn’t think it was as serious as this, but I’m pre-
pared to meet any emergency.”
“But, man,” shouted Brixton, “you don’t suppose
anything in the world counts beside her, do you?”
“Exactly the point,” urged Craig. “Save her and
capture them—both at once.”
“How can you?” fumed Brixton. “If you attempt
to telephone from here, that fellow Janeff will over-
hear and give a warning.”
Regardless of whether Janeff was listening or not,
Kennedy was eagerly telephoning to the Woodrock
central down in the village. He was using the trans-
mitter and receiver that were connected with the iron
tube which he had connected to the two regular house
lines.
“Have the ferry held at any cost,” he was ordering.
“Don’t let the next boat go out until Mr. Brixton gets
there, under any circumstances. Now put that to
them straight, central. You know Mr. Brixton has
just a little bit of influence around here, and some-
body's head will drop if they let that boat go out be-
fore he gets there.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Brixton. “Much good that
will do. Why, I suppose our friend Janeff down in
the storeroom knows it all now. Come on, let's grab
him.”


96 The Dream Doctor
Nevertheless there was no sound from the detecta-
phone which would indicate that he had overheard
and was spreading the alarm. He was there yet,
for we could hear him clear his throat once or
twice.
“No,” replied Kennedy calmly, “he knows nothing
about it. I didn’t use any ordinary means to pre-
pare against the experts who have brought this situ-
ation about. That message you heard me send went
out over what we call the “phantom circuit.’”
“The phantom circuit?” repeated Brixton, chafing
at the delay.
“Yes, it seems fantastic at first, I suppose,” pur-
sued Kennedy calmly; “but, after all, it is in accord-
ance with the laws of electricity. It's no use fretting
and fuming, Mr. Brixton. If Janeff can wait, we’ll
have to do so, too. Suppose we should start and this
Kronski should change his plans at the last minute?
How would we find it out? By telepathy? Believe
me, sir, it is better to wait here a minute and trust
to the phantom circuit than to mere chance.”
“But suppose he should cut the line,” I put in.
Kennedy smiled. “I have provided for that, Wal-
ter, in the way I installed the thing. I took good
care that we could not be cut off that way. We can
hear everything ourselves, but we cannot be over-
heard. He knows nothing. You see, I took advan-
tage of the fact that additional telephones or so-
called phantom lines can be superposed on existing
physical lines. It is possible to obtain a third cir-
cuit from two similar metallic circuits by using for
each side of this third circuit the two wires of each of


The Detectaphone 97
the other circuits in multiple. All three circuits are
independent, too.
“The third telephone current enters the wires of
the first circuit, as it were, and returns along the
wires of the second circuit. There are several ways
of doing it. One is to use retardation or choke-coils,
bridged across the two metallic circuits at both ends,
with taps taken from the middle points of each. But
the more desirable method is the one you saw me in-
stall this afternoon. I introduced repeating-coils
into the circuits at both ends. Technically, the third
circuit is then taken off from the mid-points of the
secondaries or line windings of these repeating coils.
“The current on a long-distance line is alternating
in character, and it passes readily through a repeat-
ing-coil. The only effect it has on the transmission
is slightly reducing the volume. The current passes
into the repeating-coil, then divides and passes
through the two line wires. At the other end the
halves balance, so to speak. Thus, currents passing
over a phantom circuit don’t set up currents in the
terminal apparatus of the side circuits. Conse-
quently, a conversation carried on over the phantom
circuit will not be heard in either side circuit, nor
does a conversation on one side circuit affect the
phantom. We could all talk at once without inter-
fering with each other.”
“At any other time I should be more than inter-
ested,” remarked Brixton grimly, curbing his impa-
tience to be doing something.
“I appreciate that, sir,” rejoined Kennedy. “Ah,
here it is. I have the central down in the village.


98 The Dream Doctor
Yes? They will hold the boat for us? Good.
Thank you. The nine-o'clock train is five minutes
late? Yes—What? Count Wachtmann’s car is
there? Oh, yes, the train is just pulling in. I see.
Miss Brixton has entered his car alone. What's
that? His chauffeur has started the car without
waiting for the Count, who is coming down the plat-
form *
Instantly Kennedy was on his feet. He was dash-
ing up the corridor and the stairs from the den and
down into the basement to the little storeroom.
We burst into the place. It was empty. Janeff
had cut the wires and fled. There was not a moment
to lose. Craig hastily made sure that he had not dis-
*overed or injured the phantom circuit.
“Call the fastest car you have in your garage, Mr.
Brixton,” ordered Kennedy. “Hello, hello, central'
Get the lodge at the Brixton estate. Tell them if
they see the engineer Janeff going out to stop him.
Alarm the watchman and have the dogs ready.
Catch him at any cost, dead or alive.”
A moment later Brixton's car raced around, and
we piled in and were off like a whirlwind. Already
we could see lights moving about and hear the baying
of dogs. Personally, I wouldn’t have given much for
Yaneff’s chances of escape.
As we turned the bend in the road just before we
reached the ferry, we almost ran into two cars stand-
ing before the ferry house. It looked as though one
had run squarely in front of the other and blocked
it off. In the slip the ferry boat was still steaming
and waiting.


The Detectaphone 99
Beside the wrecked car a man was lying on the
ground groaning, while another man was quieting a
girl whom he was leading to the waiting-room of the
ferry.
Brixton, weak though he was from his illness,
leaped out of our car almost before we stopped and
caught the girl in his arms.
“Father!” she exclaimed, clinging to him.
“What's this?” he demanded sternly, eying the man.
It was Wachtmann himself.
“Conrad saved me from that chauffeur of his,” ex-
plained Miss Brixton. “I met him on the train, and
we were going to ride up to the house together. But
before Conrad could get into the car this fellow, who
had the engine running, started it. Conrad jumped
into another car that was waiting at the station. He
overtook us and dodged in front so as to cut the
chauffeur off from the ferry.”
“Curse that villain of a chauffeur,” muttered
Wachtmann, looking down at the wounded man.
“Do you know who he is?” asked Craig with a
searching glance at Wachtmann's face.
“I ought to. His name is Kronski, and a blacker
devil an employment bureau never furnished.”
“Kronski? No,” corrected Kennedy. “It is Pro-
fessor Kumanova, whom you perhaps have heard of
as a leader of the Red Brotherhood, one of the clever-
est scientific criminals who ever lived. I think you'll
have no more trouble negotiating your loan or your
love affair, Count,” added Craig, turning on his heel.
He was in no mood to receive the congratulations
of the supercilious Wachtmann. As far as Craig
742778 A.


I00 The Dream Doctor
was concerned, the case was finished, although I fan-
cied from a flicker of his eye as he made some passing
reference to the outcome that when he came to send
in a bill to Brixton for his services he would not for-
get the high eyebrowed Count.
I followed in silence as Craig climbed into the Brix-
ton car and explained to the banker that it was im-
perative that he should get back to the city immedi-
ately. Nothing would do but that the car must take
us all the way back, while Brixton summoned an-
other from the house for himself.
The ride was accomplished swiftly in record time.
Kennedy said little. Apparently the exhilaration of
the on-rush of cool air was quite in keeping with his
mood, though for my part, I should have preferred
something a little more relaxing of the nervous ten-
sion.
“We’ve been at it five days, now,” I remarked wear-
ily as I dropped into an easy chair in our own quar-
ters. “Are you going to keep up this debauch?”
Kennedy laughed.
“No,” he said with a twinkle of scientific mischief,
“no, I’m going to sleep it off.”
“Thank heaven P’ I muttered.
“Because,” he went on seriously, “that case inter-
rupted a long series of tests I am making on the sen-
sitiveness of selenium to light, and I want to finish
them up soon. There's no telling when I shall be
called on to use the information.”
I swallowed hard. He really meant it. He was
laying out more work for himself.
Next morning I fully expected to find that he had


The Detectaphone IOI
gone. Instead he was preparing for what he called
a quiet day in the laboratory.
“Now for some real work,” he smiled. “Some-
times, Walter, I feel that I ought to give up this out-
side activity and devote myself entirely to research.
It is so much more important.”
I could only stare at him and reflect on how often
men wanted to do something other than the very
thing that nature had evidently intended them to do,
and on how fortunate it was that we were not always
free agents.
He set out for the laboratory and I determined
that as long as he would not stop working, neither
would I. I tried to write. Somehow I was not in
the mood. I wrote at my story, but succeeded only
in making it more unintelligible. I was in no fit con-
dition for it.
It was late in the afternoon. I had made up my
mind to use force, if necessary, to separate Kennedy
from his study of selenium. My idea was that any-
thing from the Metropolitan to the “movies” would
do him good, and I had almost carried my point when
a big, severely plain black foreign limousine pulled
up with a rush at the laboratory door. A large man
in a huge fur coat jumped out and the next moment
strode into the room. He needed no introduction,
for we recognised at once J. Perry Spencer, one of
the foremost of American financiers and a trustee of
the university.
With that characteristic directness which I have
always thought accounted in large measure for his
success, he wasted scarcely a word in coming straight


I02 The Dream Doctor
to the object of his visit. “Professor Kennedy,” he
began, chewing his cigar and gazing about with evi-
dent interest at the apparatus Craig had collected
in his warfare of science with crime, “I have dropped
in here as a matter of patriotism. I want you to pre-
serve to America those masterpieces of art and liter-
ature which I have collected all over the world during
many years. They are the objects of one of the most
curious pieces of vandalism of which I have ever
heard. Professor Kennedy,” he concluded ear-
nestly, “could I ask you to call on Dr. Hugo Lith,
the curator of my private museum, as soon as you can
possibly find it convenient?” -
“Most assuredly, Mr. Spencer,” replied Craig, with
a whimsical side glance at me that told without words
that this was better relaxation to him than either the
Metropolitan or the “movies.” “I shall be glad to
see Dr. Lith at any time—right now, if it is con-
venient to him.”
The millionaire connoisseur consulted his watch.
“Lith will be at the museum until six, at least. Yes,
we can catch him there. I have a dinner engagement
at seven myself. I can give you half an hour of the
time before then. If you’re ready, just jump into
the car, both of you.” -
The museum to which he referred was a handsome
white marble building, in Renaissance, fronting on a
side street just off Fifth Avenue and in the rear of
the famous Spencer house, itself one of the show
places of that wonderful thoroughfare. Spencer had
built the museum at great cost simply to house those
treasures which were too dear to him to entrust to a


The Detectaphone I03
public institution. It was in the shape of a rectan-
gle and planned with special care as to the lighting.
Dr. Lith, a rather stout, mild-eyed German savant,
plunged directly into the middle of things as soon as
we had been introduced. “It is a most remarkable
affair, gentlemen,” he began, placing for us chairs
that must have been hundreds of years old. “At first
it was only those objects in the museum that were
green that were touched, like the collection of famous
and historic French emeralds. But soon we found it
was other things, too, that were missing—old Roman
coins of gold, a collection of watches, and I know
not what else until we have gone over the ”
“Where is Miss White?” interrupted Spencer, who
had been listening somewhat impatiently.
“In the library, sir. Shall I call her?”
“No, I will go myself. I want her to tell her ex-
perience to Professor Kennedy exactly as she told it
to me. Explain while I am gone how impossible it
would be for a visitor to do one, to say nothing of all,
of the acts of wandalism we have discovered.”


VII
The Green Curse
HE American Medici disappeared into his main
library, where Miss White was making a mi-
nute examination to determine what damage had
been done in the realm over which she presided.
“Apparently every book with a green binding has
been mutilated in some way,” resumed Dr. Lith, “but
that was only the beginning. Others have suffered,
too, and some are even gone. It is impossible that
any visitor could have done it. Only a few personal
friends of Mr. Spencer are ever admitted here, and
they are never alone. No, it is weird, mysterious.”
Just then Spencer returned with Miss White. She
was an extremely attractive girl, slight of figure, but
with an air about her that all the imported gowns in
New York could not have conferred. They were en-
gaged in animated conversation, so much in contrast
with the bored air with which Spencer had listened
to Dr. Lith that even I noticed that the connoisseur
was completely obliterated in the man, whose love of
beauty was by no means confined to the inanimate.
I wondered if it was merely his interest in her story
that impelled Spencer. The more I watched the girl
the more I was convinced that she knew that she was
interesting to the millionaire.
“For example,” Dr. Lith was saying, “the famous
104


The Green Curse I05
collection of emeralds which has disappeared has al-
ways been what you Americans call “hoodooed.” They
have always brought ill luck, and, like many things
of the sort to which superstition attaches, they have
been ‘banked,” so to speak, by their successive owners
in museums.”
“Are they salable; that is, could any one dispose of
the emeralds or the other curios with reasonable
safety and at a good price?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” hastened Dr. Lith, “not as collec-
tions, but separately. The emeralds alone cost fifty
thousand dollars. I believe Mr. Spencer bought
them for Mrs. Spencer some years before she died.
She did not care to wear them, however, and had them
placed here.”
I thought I noticed a shade of annoyance cross the
face of the magnate. “Never mind that,” he inter-
rupted. “Let me introduce Miss White. I think
you will find her story one of the most uncanny you
have ever heard.”
He had placed a chair for her and, still addressing
us but looking at her, went on: “It seems that the
morning the vandalism was first discovered she and
Dr. Lith at once began a thorough search of the build-
ing to ascertain the extent of the depredations. The
search lasted all day, and well into the night. I be-
lieve it was midnight before you finished?”
“It was almost twelve,” began the girl, in a musical
voice that was too Parisian to harmonize with her
plain Anglo-Saxon name, “when Dr. Lith was down
here in his office checking off the objects in the cata-
logue which were either injured or missing. I had


I06 The Dream Doctor
been working in the library. The noise of something
like a shade flapping in the wind attracted my atten-
tion. I listened. It seemed to come from the art-
gallery, a large room up-stairs where some of the
greatest masterpieces in this country are hung. I
hurried up there.
“Just as I reached the door a strange feeling seemed
to come over me that I was not alone in that room.
I fumbled for the electric light switch, but in my
nervousness could not find it. There was just enough
light in the room to make out objects indistinctly. I
thought I heard a low, moaning sound from an old
Plemish copper ewer near me. I had heard that it
was supposed to groan at night.”
She paused and shuddered at her recollection, and
looked about as if grateful for the flood of electric
light that now illuminated everything. Spencer
reached over and touched her arm to encourage her
to go on. She did not seem to resent the touch.
“Opposite me, in the middle of the open floor,” she
resumed, her eyes dilated and her breath coming and
going rapidly, “stood the mummy-case of Ka, an
Egyptian priestess of Thebes, I think. The case was
empty, but on the lid was painted a picture of the
priestess! Such wonderful eyes! They seem to
pierce right through your very soul. Often in the
daytime I have stolen off to look at them. But at
night—remember the hour of night, too—oh, it was
awful, terrible. The lid of the mummy-case moved,
yes, really moved, and seemed to float to one side. I
could see it. And back of that carved and painted
face with the piercing eyes was another face, a real


The Green Curse 107
face, real eyes, and they looked out at me with such
hatred from the place that I knew was empty—”
She had risen and was facing us with wild terror
written on her face as if in appeal for protection
against something she was powerless to name. Spen-
cer, who had not taken his hand off her arm, gently
pressed her back into the easy chair and finished the
story.
“She screamed and fainted. Dr. Lith heard it and
rushed up-stairs. There she lay on the floor. The
lid of the sarcophagus had really been moved. He
saw it. Not a thing else had been disturbed. He \
carried her down here and revived her, told her to
rest for a day or two, but—”
“I cannot, I cannot,” she cried. “It is the fasci-
nation of the thing. It brings me back here. I A
dream of it. I thought I saw those eyes the other
night. They haunt me. I fear them, and yet I would
not avoid them, if it killed me to look. I must meet
and defy the power. What is it? Is it a curse four
thousand years old that has fallen on me?”
I had heard stories of mummies that rose from their
sleep of centuries to tell the fate of some one when
it was hanging in the balance, of mummies that
groaned and gurgled and fought for breath, frantic-
z ally beating with their swathed hands in the witch-
ing hours of the night. And I knew that the lure of
these mummies was so strong for some people that
they were drawn irresistibly to look upon and confer
with them. Was this a case for the oculists, the
spiritualists, the Egyptologists, or for a detective?
“I should like to examine the art gallery, in fact,
\º e


I08 The Dream Doctor
go over the whole museum,” put in Kennedy in his
most matter-of-fact tone.
Spencer, with a glance at his watch, excused him-
self, nodding to Dr. Lith to show us about, and with a
good night to Miss White which was noticeable for its
sympathy with her fears, said, “I shall be at the house
for another half-hour at least, in case anything really
important develops.”
A few minutes later Miss White left for the night,
with apparent reluctance, and yet, I thought, with
just a little shudder as she looked back up the stair-
case that led to the art-gallery.
Dr. Lith led us into a large vaulted marble hall
and up a broad flight of steps, past beautiful carvings
and frescoes that I should have liked to stop and ad-
mire.
The art-gallery was a long room in the interior and
at the top of the building, windowless but lighted by
a huge double skylight each half of which must have
been some eight or ten feet across. The light falling
through this skylight passed through plate glass of
marvellous transparency. One looked up at the sky
as if through the air itself.
Kennedy ignored the gallery’s profusion of price-
less art for the time and went directly to the mummy-
case of the priestess Ka.
“It has a weird history,” remarked Dr. Lith. “No
less than seven deaths, as well as many accidents,
have been attributed to the malign influence of that
greenish yellow coffin. You know the ancient Egyp-
tians used to chant as they buried their sacred dead:
‘Woe to him who injures the tomb. The dead shall


II.0 The Dream Doctor
larly, he asked about the basement or cellar. Dr.
Lith lighted the way, and we descended.
Down there were innumerable huge packing-cases
which had just arrived from abroad, full of the latest
consignment of art treasures which Spencer had pur-
chased. Apparently Dr. Lith and Miss White had
been so engrossed in discovering what damage had
been done to the art treasures above that they had
not had time to examine the new ones in the base-
ment.
Kennedy’s first move was to make a thorough
search of all the little grated 'windows and a door
which led out into a sort of little areaway for the re-
moval of ashes and refuse. The door showed no evi-
dence of having been tampered with, nor did any of
the windows at first sight. A low exclamation from
Rennedy brought us to his side. He had opened one
of the windows and thrust his hand out against the
grating, which had fallen on the outside pavement
with a clang. The bars had been completely and la-
boriously sawed through, and the whole thing had
been wedged back into place so that nothing would
be detected at a cursory glance. He was regarding
the lock on the window. Apparently it was all right;
actually it had been sprung so that it was useless.
“Most persons,” he remarked, “don’t know enough
about jimmies. Against them an ordinary door-lock
or window-catch is no protection. With a jimmy
eighteen inches long even an anaemic burglar can exert
a pressure sufficient to lift two tons. Not one win-
dow in a thousand can stand that strain. The only


The Green Curse III
use of locks is to keep out sneak-thieves and compel
the modern scientific educated burglar to make a
noise. But making a noise isn’t enough here, at
night. This place with all its fabulous treasures
must be guarded constantly, now, every hour, as if
the front door were wide open.”
The bars replaced and the window apparently
locked as before, Craig devoted his efforts to examin-
ing the packing cases in the basement. As yet appa-
rently nothing down there had been disturbed. But
while rummaging about, from an angle formed behind
one of the cases he drew forth a cane, to all appear-
ances an ordinary Malacca walking-stick. He bal-
anced it in his hand a moment, then shook his head.
“Too heavy for a Malacca,” he ruminated. Then
an idea seemed to occur to him. He gave the handle
a twist. Sure enough, it came off, and as it did so a
bright little light flashed up.
“Well, what do you think of that?” he exclaimed.
“For a scientific dark-lantern that is the neatest thing
I have ever seen. An electric light cane, with a lit-
tle incandescent lamp and a battery hidden in it.
This grows interesting. We must at last have found
the cache of a real gentleman burglar such as Ber-
tillon says exists only in books. I wonder if he has
anything else hidden back here.”
He reached down and pulled out a peculiar little
instrument—a single blue steel cylinder. He fitted
a hard rubber cap snugly into the palm of his hand,
and with the first and middle fingers encircled the
cylinder over a steel ring near the other end.


II2 The Dream Doctor
A loud report followed, and a vase, just unpacked,
at the opposite end of the basement was shattered as
if by an explosion.
“Phew!” exclaimed Kennedy. “I didn’t mean to
do that. I knew the thing was loaded, but I had no
idea the hair-spring ring at the end was so delicate
as to shoot it off at a touch. It's one of those aris-
tocratic little Apache pistols that one can carry in
his vest pocket and hide in his hand. Say, but that
stung! And back here is a little box of cartridges,
too.”
We looked at each other in amazement at the
chance find. Apparently the vandal had planned a
series of visits."
“Now, let me see,” resumed Kennedy. “I suppose
our very human but none the less mysterious intruder
expected to use these again. Well, let him try. I'll
put them back here for the present. I want to watch
in the art-gallery to-night.”
I could not help wondering whether, after all, it
might not be an inside job and the fixing of the win-
dow merely a blind. Or was the vandal fascinated
by the subtle influence of mysticism that so often
seems to emanate from objects that have come down
from the remote ages of the world? I could not help
asking myself whether the story that Miss White had
told was absolutely true. Had there been anything
more than superstition in the girl's evident fright?
She had seen something, I felt sure, for it was certain
she was very much disturbed. But what was it she
had really seen? So far all that Kennedy had found
had proved that the reincarnation of the priestess Ka


The Green Curse II3
had been very material. Perhaps the “reincarna-
tion” had got in in the daytime and had spent the
hours until night in the mummy-case. It might well
have been chosen as the safest and least suspicious
hiding-place. -
Kennedy evidently had some ideas and plans, for
no sooner had he completed arrangements with Dr.
Lith so that we could get into the museum that night
to watch, than he excused himself. Scarcely around
the corner on the next business street he hurried into
a telephone booth.
“I called up First Deputy O'Connor,” he explained
as he left the booth a quarter of an hour later. “You
know it is the duty of two of O'Connor's men to visit
all the pawn-shops of the city at least once a week,
looking over recent pledges and comparing them with
descriptions of stolen articles. I gave him a list from
that catalogue of Dr. Lith's and I think that if any
of the emeralds, for instance, have been pawned his
men will be on the alert and will find it out.”
We had a leisurely dinner at a near-by hotel, during
most of which time Kennedy gazed vacantly at his
food. Only once did he mention the case, and that
was almost as if he were thinking aloud.
“Nowadays,” he remarked, “criminals are excep-
tionally well informed. They used to steal only
money and jewels; to-day it is famous pictures and
antiques also. They know something about the value
of antique bronze and marble. In fact, the spread of
a taste for art has taught the enterprising burglar
that such things are worth money, and he, in turn,
has educated up the receivers of stolen goods to pay


II.4. The Dream Doctor
a reasonable percentage of the value of his artistic
plunder. The success of the European art thief is
enlightening the American thief. That's why I think
we’ll find some of this stuff in the hands of the pro-
fessional fences.”
It was still early in the evening when we returned
to the museum and let ourselves in with the key that
Dr. Lith had loaned Kennedy. He had been anxious
to join us in the watch, but Craig had diplomatically
declined, a circumstance that puzzled me and set me
thinking that perhaps he suspected the curator him-
self.
We posted ourselves in an angle where we could
not possibly be seen even if the full force of the elec-
trolier were switched on. Hour after hour we waited.
But nothing happened. There were strange and
weird noises in plenty, not calculated to reassure one,
but Craig was always ready with an explanation.
It was in the forenoon of the day after our long
and unfruitful vigil in the art-gallery that Dr. Lith
himself appeared at our apartment in a great state
of perturbation.
“Miss White has disappeared,” he gasped, in an-
swer to Craig's hurried question. “When I opened
the museum, she was not there as she is usually. In-
stead, I found this note.”
He laid the following hastily written message on
the table:
Do not try to follow me. It is the green curse that has pur-
sued me from Paris. I cannot escape it, but I may prevent it
from affecting others.
LUCILLE WHITE.


The Green Curse II5
That was all. We looked at each other at a loss to
understand the enigmatic wording—“the green
curse.”
“I rather expected something of the sort,” observed
Kennedy. “By the way, the shoenails were French,
as I surmised. They show the marks of French heels.
It was Miss White herself who hid in the mummy-
Case.”
“Impossible,” exclaimed Dr. Lith incredulously.
As for myself, I had learned that it was of no use be-
ing incredulous with Kennedy.
A moment later the door opened, and one of O'Con-
nor’s men came in bursting with news. Some of the
emeralds had been discovered in a Third Avenue
pawn-shop. O'Connor, mindful of the historic fate
of the Mexican Madonna and the stolen statue of the
Egyptian goddess Neith, had instituted a thorough
search with the result that at least part of the pilfered
jewels had been located. There was only one clue to
the thief, but it looked promising. The pawnbroker
described him as “a crazy Frenchman of an artist,”
tall, with a pointed black beard. In pawning the
jewels he had given the name of Edouard Delaverde,
and the city detectives were making a canvass of the
better known studios in hope of tracing him.
Kennedy, Dr. Lith and myself walked around to
the boarding-house where Miss White lived. There
was nothing about it, from the landlady to the gossip,
to distinguish it from scores of other places of the bet-
ter sort. We had no trouble in finding out that Miss
White had not returned home at all the night before.
The landlady seemed to look on her as a woman of


The Green Curse II7
In a corner of a cupboard near the door he disclosed
a row of dark-colored bottles. One was filled half-
way with an emerald-green liquid.
He held it up to the light and read the label, “Ab-
sinthe.”
“Ah,” he exclaimed with evident interest, looking
first at the bottle and then at the wild, formless pic-
tures. “Our crazy Frenchman was an absintheur.
I thought the pictures were rather the product of a
disordered mind than of genius.”
He replaced the bottle, adding: “It is only recently
that our own government placed a ban on the impor-
tation of that stuff as a result of the decision of the
Department of Agriculture that it was dangerous to
health and conflicted with the pure food law. In
France they call it the “scourge,” the “plague,” the ‘en-
emy,” the “queen of poisons.” Compared with other
alcoholic beverages it has the greatest toxicity of all.
There are laws against the stuff in France, Switzer-
land, and Belgium. It isn’t the alcohol alone, al-
though there is from fifty to eighty per cent. in it,
that makes it so deadly. It is the absinthe, the oil of
wormwood, whose bitterness has passed into a prov-
erb. The active principle absinthin is a narcotic poi-
son. The stuff creates a habit most insidious and dif-
ficult to break, a longing more exacting than hunger.
It is almost as fatal as cocaine in its blasting effects
on mind and body.
“Wormwood,” he pursued, still rummaging about,
“has a special affinity for the brain-cells and the nerv-
ous system in general. It produces a special afflic-
tion of the mind, which might be called absinthism.


II8 The Dream Doctor
Loss of will follows its use, brutishness, softening of
the brain. It gives rise to the wildest hallucinations.
Perhaps that was why our absintheur chose first to
destroy or steal all things green, as if there were some
merit in the colour, when he might have made away
with so many more valuable things. Absintheurs
have been known to perform some of the most intri-
cate manoeuvres, requiring great skill and the use of
delicate tools. They are given to disappearing, and
have no memory of their actions afterward.”
On an ink-spattered desk lay some books, including
Lombroso’s “Degenerate Man” and “Criminal Wom-
an.” Kennedy glanced at them, then at a crumpled
manuscript that was stuck into a pigeonhole. It was
written in a trembling, cramped, foreign hand,
evidently part of a book, or an article.
“Oh, the wickedness of wealth !” it began. “While
millions of the poor toilers slave and starve and
shiver, the slave-drivers of to-day, like the slave-driv-
ers of ancient Egypt, spend the money wrung from
the blood of the people in useless and worthless toys
of art while the people have no bread, in old books
while the people have no homes, in jewels while the
people have no clothes. Thousands are spent on dead
artists, but a dollar is grudged to a living genius.
Down with such art! I dedicate my life to righting
the wrongs of the proletariat. Vive l'anarchism!”
The thing was becoming more serious. But by far
the most serious discovery in the now deserted studio
was a number of large glass tubes in a corner, some
broken, others not yet used and standing in rows as
if waiting to be filled. A bottle labelled “Sulphuric


The Green Curse II9
Acid” stood at one end of a shelf, while at the other
was a huge jar full of black grains, next a bottle of
chlorate of potash. Kennedy took a few of the black
grains and placed them on a metal ash-tray. He
lighted a match. There was a puff and a little cloud
of smoke.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “black gunpowder. Our ab-
sintheur was a bomb-maker, an expert perhaps. Let
me see. I imagine he was making an explosive bomb,
ingeniously contrived of five glass tubes. The centre
one, I venture, contained sulphuric acid and chlorate
of potash separated by a close-packed wad of cotton
wool. Then the two tubes on each side probably con-
tained the powder, and perhaps the outside tubes were
filled with spirits of turpentine. When it is placed
in position, it is so arranged that the acid in the cen-
ter tube is uppermost and will thus gradually soak
through the cotton wool and cause great heat and an
explosion by contact with the potash. That would
ignite the powder in the next tubes, and that would
scatter the blazing turpentine, causing a terrific ex-
plosion and a widespread fire. With an imperative
idea of vengeance, such as that manuscript discloses,
either for his own wrongs as an artist or for the fan-
cied wrongs of the people, what may this absintheur
not be planning now? He has disappeared, but per-
haps he may be more dangerous if found than if lost.”


VIII
The Mummy Case
HE horrible thought occurred to me that per-
haps he was not alone. I had seen Spencer's
infatuation with his attractive librarian. The jam-
itor of the studio-building was positive that a woman
answering her description had been a visitor at the
studio. Would she be used to get at the millionaire
and his treasures? Was she herself part of the plot
to victimise, perhaps kill, him? The woman had been
much of an enigma to me at first. She was more so
now. It was barely possible that she, too, was an ab-
sintheur, who had shaken off the curse for a time only
to relapse into it again.
If there were any thoughts like these passing
through Kennedy's mind he did not show it, at least
not in the shape of hesitating in the course he had
evidently mapped out to follow. He said little, but
hurried off from the studio in a cab up-town again
to the laboratory. A few minutes later we were
speeding down to the museum.
There was not much time for Craig to work if he
hoped to be ready for anything that might happen
that night. He began by winding coil after coil of
copper wire about the storeroom in the basement of
the museum. It was not a very difficult matter to
conceal it, so crowded was the room, or to lead the
120


The Mummy Case I21
ends out through a window at the opposite side from
that where the window had been broken open.
Up-stairs in the art-gallery he next installed sev-
eral boxes such as those which I had seen him experi-
menting with during his tests of selenium on the aft-
ernoon when Mr. Spencer had first called on us.
They were camera-like boxes, about ten inches long,
three inches or so wide, and four inches deep.
One end was open, or at least looked as though
the end had been shoved several inches into the in-
terior of the box. I looked into one of the boxes and
saw a slit in the wall that had been shoved in. Ken-
nedy was busy adjusting the apparatus, and paused
only to remark that the boxes contained two sensitive
selenium surfaces balanced against two carbon re-
sistances. There was also in the box a clockwork
mechanism which Craig wound up and set ticking
ever so softly. Then he moved a rod that seemed to
cover the slit, until the apparatus was adjusted to his
satisfaction, a delicate operation, judging by the care
he took. Several of these boxes were installed, and
by that time it was quite late.
Wires from the apparatus in the art-gallery also
led outside, and these as well as the wires from the
coils down in the basement he led across the bit of
garden back of the Spencer house and up to a room
on the top floor. In the upper room he attached the
wires from the storeroom to what looked like a piece
of crystal and a telephone receiver. Those from the
art-gallery terminated in something very much like
the apparatus which a wireless operator wears over
his head.


I22 The Dream Doctor
Among other things which Craig had brought down
from the laboratory was a package which he had not
yet unwrapped. He placed it near the window, still
wrapped. It was quite large, and must have weighed
fifteen or twenty pounds. That done, he produced a
tape-measure and began, as if he were a surveyor,
to measure various distances and apparently to cal-
culate the angles and distances from the window-sill
of the Spencer house to the skylight, which was the
exact centre of the museum. The straight distance,
if I recall correctly, was in the neighborhood of four
hundred feet.
These preparations completed, there was nothing
left to do but to wait for something to happen.
Spencer had declined to get alarmed about our fears
for his own safety, and only with difficulty had we
been able to dissuade him from moving heaven and
earth to find Miss White, a proceeding which must
certainly have disarranged Kennedy’s carefully laid
plans. So interested was he that he postponed one
of the most important business conferences of the
year, growing out of the anti-trust suits, in order to
be present with Dr. Lith and ourselves in the little
upper back room. 4'
It was quite late when Kennedy completed his
hasty arrangements, yet as the night advanced we
grew more and more impatient for something to hap-
pen. Craig was apparently even more anxious than
ne had been the night before, when we watched in the
art-gallery itself. Spencer was nervously smoking,
lighting one cigar furiously from another until the
air was almost blue.


The Mummy Case I23
Scarcely a word was spoken as hour after hour
Craig sat with the receiver to his ear, connected with
the coils down in the storeroom. “You might call
this an electric detective,” he had explained to Spen-
cer. “For example, if you suspected that anything
Out of the way was going on in a room anywhere this
would report much to you even if you were miles
away. It is the discovery of a student of Thorne
Baker, the English electrical expert. He was experi-
menting with high-frequency electric currents, inves-
tigating the nature of the discharges used for elec-
trifying certain things. Quite by accident he found
that when the room on which he was experimenting
was occupied by some person his measuring-instru-
ments indicated that fact. He tested the degree of
Variation by passing the current first through the
room and then through a sensitive crystal to a deli-
cate telephone receiver. There was a distinct change
in the buzzing sound heard through the telephone
when the room was occupied or unoccupied. What
I have done is to wind single loops of plain wire on
each side of that room down there, as well as to wind
around the room a few turns of concealed copper wire.
These collectors are fitted to a crystal of car-
borundum and a telephone receiver.”
We had each tried the thing and could hear a dis-
tinct buzzing in the receiver.
“The presence of a man or woman in that room
would be evident to a person listening miles away,”
he went on. “A high-frequency current is constantly
passing through that storeroom. That is what causes
that normal buzzing.”


I24 The Dream Doctor
It was verging on midnight when Kennedy sud-
denly cried: “Here, Walter, take this receiver. You
remember how the buzzing sounded. Listen. Tell
me if you, too, can detect the change.”
I clapped the receiver quickly to my ear. Indeed
I could tell the difference. In place of the loud buzz-
ing there was only a mild sound. It was slower and
lower.
“That means,” he said excitedly, “that some one has
entered that pitch-dark storeroom by the broken win-
dow. Let me take the receiver back again. Ah, the
buzzing is coming back. He is leaving the room. I
suppose he has found the electric light cane and the
pistol where he left them. Now, Walter, since you
have become accustomed to this thing take it and
tell me what you hear.”
Craig had already seized the other apparatus con-
nected with the art-gallery and had the wireless re-
ceiver over his head. He was listening with rapt
attention, talking while he waited. -
“This is an apparatus,” he was saying, “that was
devised by Dr. Fournier d’Albe, lecturer on physics
at Birmingham University, to aid the blind. It is
known as the optophone. What I am literally doing
now is to hear light. The optophone translates light
into sound by means of that wonderful little element,
selenium, which in darkness is a poor conductor of
electricity, but in light is a good conductor. This
property is used in the optophone in transmitting an
electric current which is interrupted by a special
clockwork interrupter. It makes light and darkness
audible in the telephone. This thing over my head


The Mummy Case I25
is like a wireless telephone receiver, capable of de-
tecting a current of even a quarter of a microam-
pere.”
We were all waiting expectantly for Craig to speak.
Evidently the intruder was now mounting the stairs
to the art-gallery.
“Actually I can hear the light of the stars shining
in through that wonderful plate glass skylight of
yours, Mr. Spencer,” he went on. “A few moments
ago when the moon shone through I could hear it,
like the rumble of a passing cart. I knew it was the
moon both because I could see that it must be shining
in and because I recognised the sound. The sun
would thunder like a passing express-train if it were
daytime now. I can distinguish a shadow passing
between the optophone and the light. A hand moved
across in front of it would give a purring sound, and
a glimpse out of a window in daylight would sound
like a cinematograph reeling off a film.
“Ah, there he is.” Craig was listening with intense
excitement now. “Our intruder has entered the art-
gallery. He is flashing his electric light cane about
at various objects, reconnoitring. No doubt if I were
expert enough and had had time to study it, I could
tell you by the sound just what he is looking at.”
“Craig,” I interrupted, this time very excited my-
self, “the buzzing from the high-frequency current is
getting lower and lower.”
“By George, then, there is another of them,” he re-
plied. “I’m not surprised. Keep a sharp watch.
Tell me the moment the buzzing increases again.”
Spencer could scarcely control his impatience. It


126 The Dream Doctor
had been a long time since he had been a mere spec-
tator, and he did not seem to relish being held in
check by anybody.
“Now that you are sure the vandal is there,” he
cut in, his cigar out in his excitement, “can’t we make
a dash over there and get him before he has a chance
to do any more damage? He might be destroying
thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff while we are wait-
ing here.”
“And he could destroy the whole collection, build-
ing and all, including ourselves into the bargain, if
he heard so much as a whisper from us,” added Ken-
nedy firmly.
“That second person has left the storeroom, Craig,”
I put in. “The buzzing has returned again full
force.”
Kennedy tore the wireless receiver from his ear.
“Here, Walter, never mind about that electric detec-
tive any more, then. Take the optophone. Describe
minutely to me just exactly what you hear.”
He had taken from his pocket a small metal ball. I
seized the receiver from him and fitted it to my ear.
It took me several instants to accustom my ears to
the new sounds, but they were plain enough, and I
shouted my impressions of their variations. Kennedy
was busy at the window over the heavy package, from
which he had torn the wrapping. His back was
toward us, and we could not see what he was doing.
A terrific din sounded in my ears, almost splitting
my ear-drums. It was as though I had been suddenly
hurled into a magnified cave of the winds and a cat-
aract mightier than Niagara was thundering at me.


The Mummy Case ſ 127
It was so painful that I cried out in surprise and in-
voluntarily dropped the receiver to the floor.
“It was the switching on of the full glare of the
electric lights in the art-gallery,” Craig shouted.
“The other person must have got up to the room
quicker than I expected. Here goes.”
A loud explosion took place, apparently on the very
window-sill of our room. Almost at the same instant
there was a crash of glass from the museum.
We sprang to the window, I expecting to see Ken-
nedy injured, Spencer expecting to see his costly
museum a mass of smoking ruins. Instead we saw
nothing of the sort. On the window-ledge was a pe-
culiar little instrument that looked like a miniature
field-gun with an elaborate system of springs and
levers to break the recoil.
Craig had turned from it so suddenly that he actu-
ally ran full tilt into us. “Come on,” he cried breath-
lessly, bolting from the room, and seizing Dr. Lith
by the arm as he did so. “Dr. Lith, the keys to the
museum, quick! We must get there before the fumes
clear away.”
He was taking the stairs two at a time, dragging
the dignified curator with him.
In fewer seconds than I can tell it we were in the
museum and mounting the broad staircase to the art-
gallery. An overpowering gas seemed to permeate
everything.
“Stand back a moment,” cautioned Kennedy as we
neared the door. “I have just shot in here one of
those asphyxiating bombs which the Paris police in-
vented to war against the Apaches and the motor-car


I28 The Dream Doctor
bandits. Open all the windows back here and let the
air clear. Walter, breathe as little of it as you can
—but—come here—do you see?—over there, near the
other door—a figure lying on the floor? Make a dash
in after me and carry it out. There is just one thing
more. If I am not back in a minute come in and
try to get me.”
He had already preceded me into the stifling fumes.
With a last long breath of fresh air I plunged in
after him, scarcely knowing what would happen to
me. I saw the figure on the floor, seized it, and backed
out of the room as fast as I could.
Dizzy and giddy from the fumes I had been forced
to inhale, I managed to drag the form to the nearest
window. It was Lucille White.
An instant later I felt myself unceremoniously
pushed aside. Spencer had forgotten all about the
millions of dollars’ worth of curios, all about the sus-
picions that had been entertained against her, and
had taken the half-conscious burden from me.
“This is the second time I have found you here,
Edouard,” she was muttering in her half-delirium, still
struggling. “The first time—that night I hid in the
mummy-case, you fled when I called for help. I have
followed you every moment since last night to prevent
this. Edouard, don’t, don't! Remember I was—I
am your wife. Listen to me. Oh, it is the absinthe
that has spoiled your art and made it worthless, not
the critics. It is not Mr. Spencer who has enticed
me away, but you who drove me away, first from
Paris, and now from New York. He has been only—
No! No!—” she was shrieking now, her eyes wide


The Mummy Case I29
open as she realised it was Spencer himself she saw
leaning over her. With a great effort she seemed to
rouse herself. “Don’t stay. Run–run. Leave me.
He has a bomb that may go off at any moment. Oh—
oh-it is the curse of absinthe that pursues me. Will
you not go? Vite! Vite!”
She had almost fainted and was lapsing into
French, laughing and crying alternately, telling him
to go, yet clinging to him.
Spencer paid no attention to what she had said of
the bomb. But I did. The minute was up, and Ken-
nedy was in there yet. I turned to rush in again to
warn him at any peril.
Just then a half-conscious form staggered against
me. It was Craig himself. He was holding the in-
fernal machine of the five glass tubes that might at
any instant blow us into eternity.
Overcome himself, he stumbled. The sinking sen-
sation in my heart I can never describe. It was just
a second that I waited for the terrific explosion that
was to end it all for us, one long interminable second.
But it did not come. -
Limp as I was with the shock, I dropped down be-
side him and bent over.
“A glass of water, Walter,” he murmured, “and
fan me a bit. I didn’t dare trust myself to carry the
thing complete, so I emptied the acid into the sar-
cophagus. I guess I must have stayed in there too
long. But we are safe. See if you can drag out
Delaverde. He is in there by the mummy-case.”
Spencer was still holding Lucille, although she was
much better in the fresh air of the hall. “I under-


I80 The Dream Doctor
stand,” he was muttering. “You have been following
this fiend of a husband of yours to protect the museum
and myself from him. Lucille, Lucille—look at me.
You are mine, not his, whether he is dead or alive.
I will free you from him, from the curse of the absinthe
that has pursued you.”
The fumes had cleared a great deal by this time.
In the centre of the art-gallery we found a man, a tall,
black-bearded Frenchman, crazy indeed from the
curse of the green absinthe that had ruined him. He
was scarcely breathing from a deadly wound in his
chest. The hair-spring ring of the Apache pistol had
exploded the cartridge as he fell.
Spencer did not even look at him, as he carried his
own burden down to the little office of Dr. Lith.
“When a rich man marries a girl who has been earn-
ing her own living, the newspapers always distort it,”
he whispered aside to me a few minutes later.
“Jameson, you’re a newspaperman—I depend on you
to get the facts straight this time.”
Outside, Kennedy grasped my arm.
“You’ll do that, Walter?” he asked persuasively.
“Spencer is a client that one doesn’t get every day.
Just drop into the Star office and give them the
straight story. I’ll promise you I'll not take another
case until you are free again to go on with me in
it.”
There was no denying him. As briefly as I could
I rehearsed the main facts to the managing editor
late that night. I was too tired to write it at length,
yet I could not help a feeling of satisfaction as he ex-
claimed, “Great stuff, Jameson, great.”


132 The Dream Doctor
“The best way to find out is—to find out,” he an-
swered simply. “It’s getting late and I promised to
be there directly. I think we'd better take a taxi.”
A few minutes later we were ushered into a large
Fifth Avenue mansion and were listening to a story
which interested even Kennedy.
“Not even a blood spot has been disturbed in the
kitchen. Nothing has been altered since the discow-
ery of the murdered chef, except that his body has
been moved into the next room.”
Emery Pitts, one of the “thousand millionaires of
steel,” overwrought as he was by a murder in his own
household, sank back in his easy-chair, exhausted.
Pitts was not an old man; indeed, in years he was
in the prime of life. Yet by his looks he might almost
have been double his age, the more so in contrast with
Minna Pitts, his young and very pretty wife, who
stood near him in the quaint breakfast-room and so-
licitously moved a pillow back of his head.
Kennedy and I looked on in amazement. We knew
that he had recently retired from active business, giv-
ing as a reason his failing health. But neither of us
had thought, when the hasty summons came early
that morning to visit him immediately at his house,
that his condition was as serious as it now appeared.
“In the kitchen?” repeated Kennedy, evidently not
prepared for any trouble in that part of the house.
Pitts, who had closed his eyes, now reopened them
slowly and I noticed how contracted were the pupils.
“Yes,” he answered somewhat wearily, “my private
Kitchen which I have had fitted up. You know, I am
on a diet, have been ever since I offered the one hun-


The Mummy Case I33
dred thousand dollars for the sure restoration of
youth. I shall have you taken out there presently.” –
He lapsed again into a half dreamy state, his head
bowed on one hand resting on the arm of his chair.
The morning's mail still lay on the table, some letters
open, as they had been when the discovery had been
announced. Mrs. Pitts was apparently much excited
and unnerved by the gruesome discovery in the house.
“You have no idea who the murderer might be?”
asked Kennedy, addressing Pitts, but glancing keenly
at his wife.
“No,” replied Pitts, “if I had I should have called
the regular police. I wanted you to take it up before
they spoiled any of the clues. In the first place we
do not think it could have been done by any of the
other servants. At least, Minna says that there was
no quarrel.”
“How could any one have got in from the outside?”
asked Craig.
“There is a back way, a servants' entrance, but it
is usually locked. Of course some one might have ob-
tained a key to it.”
Mrs. Pitts had remained silent throughout the dia-
logue. I could not help thinking that she suspected
something, perhaps was concealing something. Yet
each of them seemed equally anxious to have the ma-
rauder apprehended, whoever he might be.
“My dear,” he said to her at length, “will you call
some one and have them taken to the kitchen?”


IX
The Elixir of Life
S Minna Pitts led us through the large man-
sion preparatory to turning us over to a servant
she explained hastily that Mr. Pitts had long been
ill and was now taking a new treatment under Dr.
Thompson Lord. No one having answered her bell
in the present state of excitement of the house, she
stopped short at the pivoted door of the kitchen, with
a little shudder at the tragedy, and stood only long
enough to relate to us the story as she had heard it
from the valet, Edward.
Mr. Pitts, it seemed, had wanted an early breakfast
and had sent Edward to order it. The Valet had
found the kitchen a veritable slaughter-house, with
the negro chef, Sam, lying dead on the floor. Sam
had been dead, apparently, since the night before.
As she hurried away, Kennedy pushed open the
door. It was a marvellous place, that antiseptic or
rather aseptic kitchen, with its white tiling and
enamel, its huge ice-box, and cooking-utensils for
every purpose, all of the most expensive and modern
make.
There were marks everywhere of a struggle, and
by the side of the chef, whose body now lay in the next
room awaiting the coroner, lay a long carving-knife
with which he had evidently defended himself. On
184


The Elixir of Life I85
its blade and haft were huge coagulated spots of
blood. The body of Sam bore marks of his having
been clutched violently by the throat, and in his head
was a single, deep wound that penetrated the skull
in a most peculiar manner. It did not seem possible
that a blow from a knife could have done it. It was
a most unusual wound and not at all the sort that
could have been made by a bullet.
As Kennedy examined it, he remarked, shaking his
head in confirmation of his own opinion, “That must
have been done by a Behr bulletless gun.”
“A bulletless gun?” I repeated.
“Yes, a sort of pistol with a spring-operated device
that projects a sharp blade with great force. No bul-
let and no powder are used in it. But when it is
placed directly over a vital point of the skull so that
the aim is unerring, a trigger lets a long knife shoot
out with tremendous force, and death is instantane-
ous.”
Near the door, leading to the courtyard that
opened on the side street, were some spots of blood.
They were so far from the place where the valet had
discovered the body of the chef that there could be
no doubt that they were blood from the murderer
himself. Kennedy's reasoning in the matter seemed
irresistible.
He looked under the table near the door, covered
with a large light cloth. Beneath the table and be-
hind the cloth he found another blood spot.
“How did that land there?” he mused aloud. “The
table-cloth is bloodless.”
Craig appeared to think a moment. Then he un-


The Elixir of Life 137
Kennedy was quite apparently considering the hon-
esty and faithfulness of the servant. At last he
leaned over and asked quickly, “Can I trust you?”
The frank, “Yes,” of the young fellow was convinc-
ing enough.
“What I want,” pursued Kennedy, “is to have some
one inside this house who can tell me as much as he
can see of the visitors, the messengers that come here
this morning. It will be an act of loyalty to your
employer, so that you need have no fear about that.”
Edward bowed, and left us. While I had been
seeking him, Kennedy had telephoned hastily to his
laboratory and had found one of his students there.
He had ordered him to bring down an apparatus
which he described, and some other material.
While we waited Kennedy sent word to Pitts that
he wanted to see him alone for a few minutes.
The instrument appeared to be a rubber bulb and
cuff with a rubber bag attached to the inside. From
it ran a tube which ended in another graduated glass
tube with a thin line of mercury in it like a ther-
mometer.
Craig adjusted the thing over the brachial artery
of Pitts, just above the elbow.
“It may be a little uncomfortable, Mr. Pitts,” he
apologised, “but it will be for only a few minutes.”
Pressure through the rubber bulb shut off the ar-
tery so that Kennedy could no longer feel the pulse
at the wrist. As he worked, I began to see what he
was after. The reading on the graded scale of the
height of the column of mercury indicated, I knew,
blood pressure. This time, as he worked, I noted also


I38 The Dream Doctor
the flabby skin of Pitts as well as the small and slug-
gish pupils of his eyes.
He completed his test in silence and excused him-
self, although as we went back to the kitchen I was
burning with curiosity.
“What was it?” I asked. “What did you dis-
COVer?”
“That,” he replied, “was a sphygmomanometer,
something like the sphygmograph which we used once
in another case. Normal blood pressure is 125 milli-
metres. Mr. Pitts shows a high pressure, very high.
The large life insurance companies are now using
this instrument. They would tell you that a high
pressure like that indicates apoplexy. Mr. Pitts,
young as he really is, is actually old. For, you know,
the saying is that a man is as old as his arteries.
Pitts has hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis
—perhaps other heart and kidney troubles, in short
pre-senility.”
Craig paused: then added sententiously as if to
himself: “You have heard the latest theories about
old age, that it is due to microbic poisons secreted in
the intestines and penetrating the intestinal walls?
Well, in premature senility the symptoms are the
same as in senility, only mental acuteness is not so
impaired.”
We had now reached the kitchen again. The stu-
dent had also brought down to Kennedy a number
of sterilised microscope slides and test-tubes, and
from here and there in the masses of blood spots Ken-
nedy was taking and preserving samples. He also


The Elixir of Life 139
took samples of the various foods, which he preserved
in the sterilised tubes.
While he was at work Edward joined us cautiously.
“Has anything happened?” asked Craig.
“A message came by a boy for Mrs. Pitts,” whis-
pered the valet.
“What did she do With it?”
“Tore it up.”
“And the pieces?”
“She must have hidden them somewhere.”
“See if you can get them.”
Edward nodded and left us.
“Yes,” I remarked after he had gone, “it does seem
as if the thing to do was to get on the trail of a per-
son bearing wounds of some kind. I notice, for one
thing, Craig, that Edward shows no such marks, nor
does any one else in the house as far as I can see. If
it were an “inside job’ I fancy Edward at least could
clear himself. The point is to find the person with
a bandaged hand or plastered face.”
Kennedy assented, but his mind was on another
subject. “Before we go we must see Mrs. Pitts alone,
if we can,” he said simply.
In answer to his inquiry through one of the serv-
ants she sent down word that she would see us im-
mediately in her sitting-room. The events of the
morning had quite naturally upset her, and she was,
if anything, even paler than when we saw her be-
fore.
“Mrs. Pitts,” began Kennedy, “I suppose you are
aware of the physical condition of your husband?”


140 The Dream Doctor
It seemed a little abrupt to me at first, but he in-
tended it to be. “Why,” she asked with real alarm,
“is he so very badly?”
“Pretty badly,” remarked Kennedy mercilessly, ob-
serving the effect of his words. “So badly, I fear,
that it would not require much more excitement like
to-day's to bring on an attack of apoplexy. I should
advise you to take especial care of him, Mrs. Pitts.”
Following his eyes, I tried to determine whether
the agitation of the woman before us was genuine
or not. It certainly looked so. But then, I knew
that she had been an actress before her marriage.
Was she acting a part now?
“What do you mean?” she asked tremulously.
“Mrs. Pitts,” replied Kennedy quickly, observing
still the play of emotion on her delicate features,
“some one, I believe, either regularly in or employed
in this house or who had a ready means of access to
it must have entered that kitchen last night. For
what purpose, I can leave you to judge. But Sam
surprised the intruder there and was killed for his
faithfulness.”
Her startled look told plainly that though she
might have suspected something of the sort she did
not think that any one else suspected, much less
actually perhaps knew it.
“I can’t imagine who it could be, unless it might
be one of the servants,” she murmured hastily; add-
ing, “and there is none of them that I have any right
to suspect.”
She had in a measure regained her composure, and
Kennedy felt that it was no use to pursue the con-


The Elixir of Life 141
versation further, perhaps expose his hand before he
was ready to play it.
“That woman is concealing something,” remarked
Kennedy to me as we left the house a few minutes
later. -
“She at least bears no marks of violence herself of
any kind,” I commented.
“No,” agreed Craig, “no, you are right so far.”
He added: “I shall be very busy in the laboratory
this afternoon, and probably longer. However, drop
in at dinner time, and in the meantime, don’t say a
word to any one, but just use your position on the
Star to keep in touch with anything the police au-
thorities may be doing.”
It was not a difficult commission, since they did
nothing but issue a statement, the net import of
which was to let the public know that they were very
active, although they had nothing to report.
Kennedy was still busy when I rejoined him, a lit-
tle late purposely, since I knew that he would be over
his head in work.
“What's this—a zoo?” I asked, looking about me
as I entered the sanctum that evening.
There were dogs and guinea pigs, rats and mice,
a menagerie that would have delighted a small boy.
It did not look like the same old laboratory for the
investigation of criminal science, though I saw on a
second glance that it was the same, that there was
the usual hurly-burly of microscopes, test-tubes, and
all the paraphernalia that were so mystifying at first
but in the end under his skilful hand made the most
complicated cases seem stupidly simple.


The Elixir of Life I43
º
while the slayers have used the knowledge of the sci-
entists both to commit and to cover up the crimes. I
tell you, Walter, a murder science bureau not only
would clear up nearly every poison mystery, but also
it would inspire such a wholesome fear among
would-be murderers that they would abandon many
attempts to take life.”
He was as excited over the case as I had ever seen
him. Indeed it was one that evidently taxed his ut-
most powers.
“What have you found?” I asked, startled.
“You remember my use of the sphygmomano-
meter?” he asked. “In the first place that put me
on what seems to be a clear trail. The most dreaded
of all the ills of the cardiac and vascular systems
nowadays seems to be arterio-sclerosis, or hardening
of the arteries. It is possible for a man of forty-
odd, like Mr. Pitts, to have arteries in a condition
which would not be encountered normally in persons
under seventy years of age.
“The hard or hardening artery means increased
blood pressure, with a consequent increased strain
on the heart. This may lead, has led in this case,
to a long train of distressing symptoms, and, of
course, to ultimate death. Heart disease, according
to statistics, is carrying off a greater percentage of
persons than formerly. This fact cannot be denied,
and it is attributed largely to worry, the abnormal
rush of the life of to-day, and sometimes to faulty
methods of eating and bad nutrition. On the sur-
face, these natural causes might seem to be at work
with Mr. Pitts. But, Walter, I do not believe it, I


I44 The Dream Doctor
do not believe it. There is more than that, here.
Come, I can do nothing more to-night, until I learn
more from these animals and the cultures which I
have in these tubes. Let us take a turn or two, then
dine, and perhaps we may get some word at our
apartment from Edward.”
It was late that night when a gentle tap at the door
proved that Kennedy's hope had not been unfounded.
I opened it and let in Edward, the valet, who pro-
duced the fragments of a note, torn and crumpled.
“There is nothing new, sir,” he explained, “except
that Mrs. Pitts seems more nervous than ever, and
Mr. Pitts, I think, is feeling a little brighter.”
Kennedy said nothing, but was hard at work with
puckered brows at piecing together the note which
Edward had obtained after hunting through the
house. It had been thrown into a fireplace in Mrs.
Pitts’s own room, and only by chance had part of it
been unconsumed. The body of the note was gone
altogether, but the first part and the last part re-
mained.
Apparently it had been written the very morning
on which the murder was discovered.
It read simply, “I have succeeded in having Thorn-
ton declared . . . .” Then there was a break. The
last words were legible, and were, “ . . . confined in
a suitable institution where he can cause no future
harm.”
There was no signature, as if the sender had per-
fectly understood that the receiver would understand.
“Not difficult to supply some of the context, at any
rate,” mused Kennedy. “Whoever Thornton may be,


I46 The Dream Doctor
afresh on the morrow, but Kennedy seemed to feel
that the case was too urgent to lose even twelve hours
OVer’.
It was a peculiar place, isolated, out-of-the-way,
and guarded by a high brick wall that enclosed a
pretty good sized garden.
A ring at the bell brought a sharp-eyed maid to
the door.
“Have you—er—any one here named Thornton—
er—?” Kennedy paused in such a way that if it were
the last name he might come to a full stop, and if it
were a first name he could go on.
“There is a Mr. Thornton who came yesterday,”
she snapped ungraciously, “but you can not see him.
It's against the rules.”
“Yes—yesterday,” repeated Kennedy eagerly, ig-
noring her tartness. “Could I–” he slipped a
crumpled treasury note into her hand—“could I
speak to Mr. Thornton's nurse?”
The note seemed to render the acidity of the girl
slightly alkaline. She opened the door a little fur-
ther, and we found ourselves in a plainly furnished
reception room, alone.
We might have been in the reception-room of a
prosperous country gentleman, so quiet was it. There
was none of the raving, as far as I could make out,
that I should have expected even in a twentieth cen-
tury Bedlam, no material for a Poe story of Dr. Tarr
and Professor Feather.
At length the hall door opened, and a man entered,
not a prepossessing man, it is true, with his large and


The Elixir of Life 147
powerful hands and arms and slightly bowed, almost
bulldog legs. Yet he was not of that aggressive kind
which would make a show of physical strength with-
out good and sufficient cause.
“You have charge of Mr. Thornton?” inquired
Kennedy.
“Yes,” was the curt response.
“I trust he is all right here?”
“He wouldn’t be here if he was all right,” was the
quick reply. “And who might you be?”
“I knew him in the old days,” replied Craig
evasively. “My friend here does not know him, but
I was in this part of Westchester visiting and having
heard he was here thought I would drop in, just for
old time’s sake. That is all.” -
“How did you know he was here?” asked the man
suspiciously.
“I heard indirectly from a friend of mine, Mrs.
Pitts.”
“Oh.”
The man seemed to accept the explanation at its
face value.
“Is he very—very badly?” asked Craig with well-
feigned interest.
“Well,” replied the man, a little mollified by a good
cigar which I produced, “don’t you go a-telling her,
but if he says the name Minna once a day it is a thou-
sand times. Them drug-dopes has some strange de-
lusions.”
“Strange delusions?” queried Craig. “Why, what
do you mean?”


I48 The Dream Doctor
“Say,” ejaculated the man. “I don’t know you,
You come here saying you’re friends of Mr. Thorn.
ton's. How do I know what you are?”
“Well,” ventured Kennedy, “suppose I should also
tell you I am a friend of the man who committed
him.”
“Of Dr. Thompson Lord?”
“Exactly. My friend here knows Dr. Lord very
well, don't you, Walter?”
Thus appealed to I hastened to add, “Indeed I do.”
Then, improving the opening, I hastened: “Is this
Mr. Thornton Violent? I think this is one of the
most quiet institutions I ever saw for so small a
place.”
The man shook his head.
“Because,” I added, “I thought some drug fiends
were violent and had to be restrained by force, often.”
“You won’t find a mark or a scratch on him, sir,”
replied the man. “That ain’t our system.”
“Not a mark or scratch on him,” repeated Kennedy
thoughtfully. “I wonder if he'd recognise me?”
“Can’t say,” concluded the man. “What's more,
can’t try. It's against the rules. Only your know-
ing so many he knows has got you this far. You’ll
have to call on a regular day or by appointment to
see him, gentlemen.”
There was an air of finality about the last state-
ment that made Kennedy rise and move toward the
door with a hearty “Thank you, for your kindness,”
and a wish to be remembered to “poor old Thornton.”
As we climbed into the car he poked me in the ribs.
“Just as good for the present as if we had seen him.”


The Elixir of Life I49
he exclaimed. “Drug-fiend, friend of Mrs. Pitts, com-
mitted by Dr. Lord, no wounds.”
Then he lapsed into silence as we sped back to
the city.
“The Pitts house,” ordered Kennedy as we bowled
along, after noting by his watch that it was after
nine. Then to me he added, “We must see Mrs. Pitts
once more, and alone.”
We waited some time after Kennedy sent up word
that he would like to see Mrs. Pitts. At last she ap-
peared. I thought she avoided Kennedy’s eye, and
I am sure that her intuition told her that he had some
revelation to make, against which she was steeling
herself.
Craig greeted her as reassuringly as he could, but
as she sat nervously before us, I could see that she
was in reality pale, worn, and anxious.
“We have had a rather hard day,” began Kennedy
after the usual polite inquiries about her own and
her husband's health had been, I thought, a little pro-
longed by him.
“Indeed?” she asked. “Have you come any closer
to the truth?”
Kennedy met her eyes, and she turned away.
“Yes, Mr. Jameson and I have put in the better
part of the day in going from one institution for the
insané to another.”
He paused. The startled look on her face told as
plainly as words that his remark had struck home.
Without giving her a chance to reply, or to think
of a verbal means of escape, Craig hurried on with
an account of what we had done, saying nothing about


X
The Toxin of Death
HE note of appeal in her tone was powerful, but
I could not so readily shake off my first sus-
picions of the woman. Whether or not she convinced
Kennedy, he did not show.
“I was only a young girl when I met Mr. Thorn-
ton,” she raced on. “I was not yet eighteen when
we were married. Too late, I found out the curse
of his life—and of mine. He was a drug fiend. From
the very first life with him was insupportable. I
stood it as long as I could, but when he beat me be-
cause he had no money to buy drugs, I left him. I
gave myself up to my career on the stage. Later I
heard that he was dead—a suicide. I worked, day
and night, slaved, and rose in the profession—until,
at last, I met Mr. Pitts.” -
She paused, and it was evident that it was with
a struggle that she could talk so. -
“Three months after I was married to him, Thorn-
ton suddenly reappeared, from the dead it seemed
to me. He did not want me back. No, indeed. All
he wanted was money. I gave him money, my own
money, for I made a great deal in my stage days.
But his demands increased. To silence him I have
paid him thousands. He squandered them faster
than ever. And finally, when it became unbearable,
151


I52 The Dream Doctor
I appealed to a friend. That friend has now suc-
ceeded in placing this man quietly in a sanitarium
for the insane.”
“And the murder of the chef?” shot out Kennedy.
She looked from one to the other of us in alarm.
“Before God, I know no more of that than does Mr.
Pitts.”
Was she telling the truth? Would she stop at any-
thing to avoid the scandal and disgrace of the charge
of bigamy? Was there not something still that she
was concealing? She took refuge in the last resort
—tears.
Encouraging as it was to have made such progress,
it did not seem to me that we were much nearer,
after all, to the solution of the mystery. Kennedy,
as usual, had nothing to say until he was absolutely
sure of his ground. He spent the greater part of the
next day hard at work over the minute investiga-
tions of his laboratory, leaving me to arrange the de-
tails of a meeting he planned for that night.
There were present Mr. and Mrs. Pitts, the former
in charge of Dr. Lord. The valet, Edward, was also
there, and in a neighbouring room was Thornton in
charge of two nurses from the sanitarium. Thorn-
ton was a sad wreck of a man now, whatever he might
have been when his blackmail furnished him with an
unlimited supply of his favourite drugs.
“Let us go back to the very start of the case,” be-
gan Kennedy when we had all assembled, “the mur-
der of the chef, Sam.”
It seemed that the mere sound of his voice electri-
fied his little audience. I fancied a shudder passed


The Toxin of Death 153
over the slight form of Mrs. Pitts, as she must have
realised that this was the point where Kennedy had
left off, in his questioning her the night before.
“There is,” he went on slowly, “a blood test so deli-
cate that one might almost say that he could identify
a criminal by his very blood-crystals—the finger-
prints, so to speak, of his blood. It was by means
of these “hemoglobin clues, if I may call them so,
that I was able to get on the right trail. For the
fact is that a man’s blood is not like that of any other
living creature. Blood of different men, of men and
women differ. I believe that in time we shall be able
to refine this test to tell the exact individual, too.
“What is this principle? It is that the hemo-
globin or red colouring-matter of the blood forms
crystals. That has long been known, but working on
this fact Dr. Reichert and Professor Brown of the
University of Pennsylvania have made some wonder-
ful discoveries.
“We could distinguish human from animal blood
before, it is true. But the discovery of these two
scientists takes us much further. By means of
blood-crystals we can distinguish the blood of man
from that of the animals and in addition that of white
men from that of negroes and other races. It is often
the only way of differentiating between various kinds
of blood.
“The variations in crystals in the blood are in part
of form and in part of molecular structure, the latter
being discovered only by means of the polarising
microscope. A blood-crystal is only one two-thou-
sand-two-hundred-and-fiftieth of an inch in length and


I54 The Dream Doctor
w
one nine-thousandth of an inch in breadth. And yet,
minute as these crystals are, this discovery is of im-
mense medico-legal importance. Crime may now be
traced by blood-crystals.” .
He displayed on his table a number of enlarged
micro-photographs. Some were labelled, “Charac-
teristic crystals of white man’s blood”; others “Crys-
tallisation of negro blood”; still others, “Blood-
crystals of the cat.”
“I have here,” he resumed, after we had all exam-
ined the photographs and had seen that there was
indeed a vast amount of difference, “three charac-
teristic kinds of crystals, all of which I found in the
various spots in the kitchen of Mr. Pitts. There were
three kinds of blood, by the infallible Reichert test.”
I had been prepared for his discovery of two kinds,
but three heightened the mystery still more.
“There was only a very little of the blood which
was that of the poor, faithful, unfortunate Sam, the
negro chef,” Kennedy went on. “A little more, found
far from his body, is that of a white person. But
most of it is not human blood at all. It was the
blood of a cat.”
The revelation was startling. Before any of us
could ask, he hastened to explain.
“It was placed there by some one who wished to
exaggerate the struggle in order to divert suspicion.
That person had indeed been wounded slightly, but
wished it to appear that the wounds were very seri-
ous. The fact of the matter is that the carving-knife
is spotted deeply with blood, but it is not human
blood. It is the blood of a cat. A few years ago


The Toxin of Death I55
even a scientific detective would have concluded that
a fierce hand-to-hand struggle had been waged and
that the murderer was, perhaps, fatally wounded.
Now, another conclusion stands, proved infallibly by
this Reichert test. The murderer was wounded, but
not badly. That person even went out of the room
and returned later, probably with a can of animal
blood, sprinkled it about to give the appearance of
a struggle, perhaps thought of preparing in this way
a plea of self-defence. If that latter was the case,
this Reichert test completely destroys it, clever
though it was.” -
No one spoke, but the same thought was openly in
all our minds. Who was this wounded criminal?
I asked myself the usual query of the lawyers and
the detectives— Who would benefit most by the
death of Pitts? There was but one answer, appar-
ently, to that. It was Minna Pitts. Yet it was dif-
ficult for me to believe that a woman of her ordinary
gentleness could be here to-night, faced even by so
great exposure, yet be so solicitous for him as she
had been and then at the same time be plotting
against him. I gave it up, determining to let Ken-
nedy unravel it in his own way.
Craig evidently had the same thought in his mind,
however, for he continued: “Was it a woman who
killed the chef? No, for the third specimen of blood,
that of the white person, was the blood of a man;
not of a woman.”
Pitts had been following closely, his unnatural
eyes now gleaming. “You said he was wounded, you
remember,” he interrupted, as if casting about in his


I56 The Dream Doctor
mind to recall some one who bore a recent wound.
“Perhaps it was not a bad wound, but it was a wound,
nevertheless, and some one must have seen it, must
know about it. It is not three days.”
Kennedy shook his head. It was a point that had
bothered him a great deal.
“As to the wounds,” he added in a measured tone,
“although this occurred scarcely three days ago, there
is no person even remotely suspected of the crime who
can be said to bear on his hands or face others than
old scars of wounds.”
He paused. Then he shot out in quick staccato,
“Did you ever hear of Dr. Carrel's most recent dis-
covery of accelerating the healing of wounds so that
those which under ordinary circumstances might take
ten days to heal might be healed in twenty-four
hours?”
Rapidly, now, he sketched the theory. “If the fac-
tors that bring about the multiplication of cells and
the growth of tissues were discovered, Dr. Carrel said
to himself, it would perhaps become possible to hasten
artificially the process of repair of the body. Aseptic
wounds could probably be made to cicatrise more rap-
idly. If the rate of reparation of tissue were has-
tened only ten times, a skin wound would heal in less
than twenty-four hours and a fracture of the leg in
four or five days.
“For five years Dr. Carrel has been studying the
subject, applying various extracts to wounded tissues.
All of them increased the growth of connective tissue,
but the degree of acceleration varied greatly. In


The Toxin of Death 157
Some cases it was as high as forty times the normal.
Dr. Carrel's dream of ten times the normal was ex-
ceeded by himself.”
Astounded as we were by this revelation, Kennedy
did not seem to consider it as important as one that
he was now hastening to show us. He took a few
cubic centimetres of some culture which he had been
preparing, placed it in a tube, and poured in eight
Or ten drops of sulphuric acid. He shook it.
“I have here a culture from some of the food that
I found was being or had been prepared for Mr.
Pitts. It was in the icebox.”
Then he took another tube. “This,” he remarked,
“is a one-to-one-thousand solution of sodium nitrite.”
He held it up carefully and poured three or four
cubic centimetres of it into the first tube so that it ran
carefully down the side in a manner such as to form
a sharp line of contact between the heavier culture
with the acid and the lighter nitrite solution.
“You see,” he said, “the reaction is very clear cut
if you do it this way. The ordinary method in the
laboratory and the text-books is crude and uncertain.”
“What is it?” asked Pitts eagerly, leaning forward
with unwonted strength and noting the pink colour
that appeared at the junction of the two liquids, con-
trasting sharply with the portions above and below.
“The ring or contact test for indol,” Kennedy re-
plied, with evident satisfaction. “When the acid and
the nitrites are mixed the colour reaction is unsatis-
factory. The natural yellow tint masks that pink
tint, or sometimes causes it to disappear, if the tube


I58 The Dream Doctor
is shaken. But this is simple, clear, delicate—unes-
capable. There was indol in that food of yours, Mr.
Pitts.”
“Indol?” repeated Pitts.
“Is,” explained Kennedy, “a chemical compound—
one of the toxins secreted by intestinal bacteria and
responsible for many of the symptoms of senility. It
used to be thought that large doses of indol might be
consumed with little or no effect on normal man, but
now we know that headache, insomnia, confusion, ir-
ritability, decreased activity of the cells, and intoxi-
cation are possible from it. Comparatively small
doses over a long time produce changes in organs that
lead to serious results.
“It is,” went on Kennedy, as the full horror of the
thing sank into our minds, “the indol- and phenol-
producing bacteria which are the undesirable citizens
of the body, while the lactic-acid producing germs
check the production of indol and phenol. In my
tests here to-day, I injected four one-hundredths of a
grain of indol into a guinea-pig. The animal had
sclerosis or hardening of the aorta. The liver, kid-
neys, and supra-renals were affected, and there was a
hardening of the brain. In short, there were all the
symptoms of old age.”
We sat aghast. Indol! What black magic was
this? Who put it in the food?
“It is present,” continued Craig, “in much larger
quantities than all the Metchnikoff germs could neu-
tralise. What the chef was ordered to put into the
food to benefit you, Mr. Pitts, was rendered valueless,
and a deadly poison was added by what another—”


The Toxin of Death I59
Minna Pitts had been clutching for support at the
arms of her chair as Kennedy proceeded. She now
threw herself at the feet of Emery Pitts.
“Forgive me,” she sobbed. “I can stand it no
longer. I had tried to keep this thing about Thorn-
ton from you. I have tried to make you happy and
well—oh–tried so hard, so faithfully. Yet that old
skeleton of my past which I thought was buried would
not stay buried. I have bought Thornton off again
and again, with money—my money—only to find him
threatening again. But about this other thing, this
poison, I am as innocent, and I believe Thornton is
as—”
Craig laid a gentle hand on her lips. She rose
wildly and faced him in passionate appeal.
“Who-who is this Thornton?” demanded Emery
Pitts.
Quickly, delicately, sparing her as much as he
could, Craig hurried over our experiences.
“He is in the next room,” Craig went on, then fac-
ing Pitts added: “With you alive, Emery Pitts, this
blackmail of your wife might have gone on, although
there was always the danger that you might hear of
it—and do as I see you have already done—forgive,
and plan to right the unfortunate mistake. But with
you dead, this Thornton, or rather some one using
him, might take away from Minna Pitts her whole
interest in your estate, at a word. The law, or your
heirs at law, would never forgive as you would.”
Pitts, long poisoned by the subtle microbic poison,
stared at Kennedy as if dazed.
“Who was caught in your kitchen, Mr. Pitts, and,


160 The Dream Doctor
to escape detection, killed your faithful chef and cov-
ered his own traces so cleverly?” rapped out Ken-
nedy. “Who would have known the new process of
healing wounds? Who knew about the fatal proper-
ties of indol? Who was willing to forego a one-hun-
dred-thousand-dollar prize in order to gain a fortune
of many hundreds of thousands?”
Kennedy paused, then finished with irresistibly
dramatic logic,
“Who else but the man who held the secret of
Minna Pitts's past and power over her future so long
as he could keep alive the unfortunate Thornton—
the up-to-date doctor who substituted an elixir of
death at night for the elixir of life prescribed for you
by him in the daytime—Dr. Lord.”
Kennedy had moved quietly toward the door. It
was unnecessary. Dr. Lord was cornered and knew
it. He made no fight. In fact, instantly his keen
mind was busy outlining his battle in court, relying
on the conflicting testimony of hired experts.
“Minna,” murmured Pitts, falling back, exhausted
by the excitement, on his pillows, “Minna—forgive?
What is there to forgive? The only thing to do is to
correct. I shall be well—soon now—my dear. Then
all will be straightened out.”
“Walter,” whispered Kennedy to me, “while we
are waiting, you can arrange to have Thornton cared
for at Dr. Hodge's Sanitarium.”
He handed me a card with the directions where to
take the unfortunate man. When at last I had
Thornton placed where no one else could do any harm
through him, I hastened back to the laboratory.


The Toxin of Death I61
Craig was still there, waiting alone.
“That Dr. Lord will be a tough customer,” he re-
marked. “Of course you’re not interested in what
happens in a case after we have caught the criminal.
But that often is really only the beginning of the
fight. We’ve got him safely lodged in the Tombs now,
however.”
“I wish there was some elixir for fatigue,” I re-
marked, as we closed the laboratory that night.
“There is,” he replied. “A homeopathic remedy—
more fatigue.”
We started on our usual brisk roundabout walk to
the apartment. But instead of going to bed, Ken-
nedy drew a book from the bookcase.
“I shall read myself to sleep to-night,” he ex-
plained, settling deeply in his chair. -
As for me, I went directly to my room, planning
that to-morrow I would take several hours off and
catch up in my notes.
That morning Kennedy was summoned downtown
and had to interrupt more important duties in order
to appear before Dr. Leslie in the coroner's inquest
over the death of the chef. Dr. Lord was held for
the Grand Jury, but it was not until nearly noon that
Craig returned.
We were just about to go out to luncheon, when the
door buzzer sounded.
“A note for Mr. Kennedy,” announced a man in a
police uniform, with a blue anchor edged with white
on his coat sleeve.
Craig tore open the envelope quickly with his fore-
finger. Headed “Harbour Police, Station No. 3,


I62 The Dream Doctor
Staten Island,” was an urgent message from our old
friend Deputy Commissioner O’Connor.
“I have taken personal charge of a case here that
is sufficiently out of the ordinary to interest you,”
I read when Kennedy tossed the note over to me and
nodded to the man from the harbour squad to wait
for us. “The Curtis family wish to retain a private
detective to work in conjunction with the police in
investigating the death of Bertha Curtis, whose body
was found this morning in the waters of Kill van
Kull.”
Kennedy and I lost no time in starting downtown
with the policeman who had brought the note.
The Curtises, as we knew, were among the promi-
nent families of Manhattan and I recalled having
heard that at one time Bertha Curtis had been an
actress, in spite of the means and social position of
her family, from whom she had become estranged as
a result. -
At the station of the harbour police, O'Connor and
another man, who was in a state of extreme excite-
ment, greeted us almost before we had landed.
“There have been some queer doings about here,”
exclaimed the deputy as he grasped Kennedy's hand,
“but first of all let me introduce Mr. Walker Curtis.”
In a lower tone as we walked up the dock O’Con-
nor continued, “He is the brother of the girl whose
body the men in the launch at the station found in
the Kill this morning. They thought at first that the
girl had committed suicide, making it doubly sure
by jumping into the water, but he will not believe it
and,-well, if you'll just come over with us to the lo-


The Toxin of Death I63
cal undertaking establishment, I’d like to have you
take a look at the body and see if your opinion coin-
cides with mine. -
“Ordinarily,” pursued O'Connor, “there isn't much
romance in harbour police work nowadays, but in
this case some other elements seem to be present
which are not usually associated with violent deaths
in the waters of the bay, and I have, as you will see,
thought it necessary to take personal charge of the
investigation. -
“Now, to shorten the story as much as possible,
Kennedy, you know of course that the legislature at
the last session enacted laws prohibiting the sale of
such drugs as opium, morphine, cocaine, chloral and
others, under much heavier penalties than before.
The Health authorities not long ago reported to us
that dope was being sold almost openly, without or-
ders from physicians, at several scores of places and
we have begun a crusade for the enforcement of the
law. Of course you know how prohibition works in
many places and how the law is beaten. The dope
fiends seem to be doing the same thing with this law.
“Of course nowadays everybody talks about a “sys-
tem’ controlling everything, so I suppose people
would say that there is a ‘dope trust.” At any rate
we have run up against at least a number of places
that seem to be banded together in some way, from
the lowest down in Chinatown to one very swell joint
uptown around what the newspapers are calling
‘Crime Square.’ It is not that this place is pander-
ing to criminals or the women of the Tenderloin that
interests us so much as that its patrons are men and


I64 The Dream Doctor
women of fashionable society whose jangled nerves
seem to demand a strong narcotic.
“This particular place seems to be a headquarters
for obtaining them, especially opium and its deriva-
tives.
“One of the frequenters of the place was this un-
fortunate girl, Bertha Curtis. I have watched her
go in and out myself, wild-eyed, nervous, mentally
and physically wrecked for life. Perhaps twenty-
five or thirty persons visit the place each day. It
is run by a man known as ‘Big Jack’ Clendenin who
was once an actor and, I believe, met and fascinated
Miss Curtis during her brief career on the stage. He
has an attendant there, a Jap, named Nichi Moto,
who is a perfect enigma. I can’t understand him
on any reasonable theory. A long time ago we raided
the place and packed up a lot of opium, pipes, mate-
rial and other stuff. We found Clendenin there, this
girl, several others, and the Jap. I never understood
just how it was but somehow Clendenin got off with
a nominal fine and a few days later opened up again.
We were watching the place, getting ready to raid it
again and present such evidence that Clendenin
couldn’t possibly beat it, when all of a sudden along
came this—this tragedy.”
We had at last arrived at the private establish-
ment which was doing duty as a morgue. The be-
draggled form that had been bandied about by the
tides all night lay covered up in the cold damp base-
ment. Bertha Curtis had been a girl of striking
beauty once. For a long time I gazed at the swollen
features before I realised what it was that fascinated


The Toxin of Death I65
and puzzled me about her. Kennedy, however, after
a casual glance had arrived at at least a part of her
story.
“That girl,” he whispered to me so that her brother
could not hear, “has led a pretty fast life. Look at
those nails, yellow and dark. It isn’t a weak face,
either. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing,
the Oriental glamour and all that, fascinated her as
much as the drug.”
So far the case with its heartrending tragedy had
all the earmarks of suicide.


XI
The Opium Joint
O'º drew back the sheet which covered
her and in the calf of the leg disclosed an
ugly bullet hole. Ugly as it was, however, it was
anything but dangerous and seemed to indicate noth-
ing as to the real cause of her death. He drew from
his pocket a slightly misshapen bullet which had been
probed from the wound and handed it to Kennedy,
who examined both the wound and the bullet care-
fully. It seemed to be an ordinary bullet except
that in the pointed end were three or four little round,
very shallow wells or depressions only the minutest
fraction of an inch deep.
“Very extraordinary,” he remarked slowly. “No,
I don’t think this was a case of suicide. Nor was it
a murder for money, else the jewels would have been
taken.”
O'Connor looked approvingly at me. “Exactly
what I said,” he exclaimed. “She was dead before
her body was thrown into the water.”
“No, I don’t agree with you there,” corrected Craig,
continuing his examination of the body. “And yet it
is not a case of drowning exactly, either.”
“Strangled?” suggested O’Connor.
“By some jiu jitsu trick?” I put in, mindful of the
queer-acting Jap at Clendenin's.
166


I68 The Dream Doctor
swift, without lights, and with an engine carefully
muffled down which has been coming up to the old
dock for the past few nights when the tide was high
enough. A light has been seen moving on the dock,
then suddenly extinguished, only to reappear again.
Who carried it and why, no one knows. Any one
who has tried to approach the place has had a scare
thrown into him which he will not easily forget. For
instance, one man crept up and though he did not
think he was seen he was suddenly shot at from be-
hind a tree. He felt the bullet pierce his arm, started
to run, stumbled, and next morning woke up in the
exact spot on which he had fallen, none the worse for
his experience except that he had a slight wound that
will prevent his using his right arm for some time for
heavy work.
“After each visit of the phantom boat there is
heard, according to the story of the few neighbours
who have observed it, the tramp of feet up the over-
grown stone walk from the dock and some have said
that they heard an automobile as silent and ghostly
as the boat. We have been all through the weird old
house, but have found nothing there, except enough
loose boards and shutters to account for almost any
noise or combination of noises. However, no one has
said there was anything there except the tramp of
feet going back and forth on the old pavements out-
side. Two or three times shots have been heard, and
on the dock where most of the alleged mysterious
doings have taken place we have found one very new
exploded shell of a cartridge.”
Craig took the shell which O’Connor drew from


The Opium Joint I69
another pocket and trying to fit the bullet and the
cartridge together remarked “both from a .44, proba-
bly one of those old-fashioned, long-barrelled makes.”
“There,” concluded O'Connor ruefully, “you know
all we know of the thing so far.”
“I may keep these for the present?” inquired Ken-
nedy, preparing to pocket the shell and the bullet,
and from his very manner I could see that as a matter
of fact he already knew a great deal more about the
case than the police. “Take us down to this old
house and dock, if you please.”
Over and over, Craig paced up and down the dilap-
idated dock, his keen eyes fastened to the ground,
seeking some clue, anything that would point to the
marauders. Real persons they certainly were, and
not any ghostly crew of the bygone days of harbour
pirates, for there was every evidence of some one who
had gone up and down the walk recently, not once
but many times.
Suddenly Kennedy stumbled over what looked like
a sardine tin can, except that it had no label or trace
of one. It was lying in the thick long matted grass
by the side of the walk as if it had tumbled there and
had been left unnoticed.
Yet there was nothing so very remarkable about it
in itself. Tin cans were lying all about, those marks
of decadent civilisation. But to Craig it had in-
stantly presented an idea. It was a new can. The
others were rusted.
He had pried off the lid and inside was a blackish,
viscous mass.
“Smoking opium,” Craig said at last.


170 The Dream Doctor
We retraced our steps pondering on the signifi-
cance of the discovery.
O'Connor had had men out endeavouring all day
to get a clue to the motor car that had been men-
tioned in some of the accounts given by the natives.
So far the best he had been able to find was a report
of a large red touring car which crossed from New
York on a late ferry. In it were a man and a girl
as well as a chauffeur who wore goggles and a cap
pulled down over his head so that he was practically
unrecognisable. The girl might have been Miss Cur-
tis and, as for the man, it might have been Clendenin.
No one had bothered much with them; no one had
taken their number; no one had paid any attention
where they went after the ferry landed. In fact,
there would have been no significance to the report
if it had not been learned that early in the morning
on the first ferry from the lower end of the island
to New Jersey a large red touring car answering
about the same description had crossed, with a single
man and driver but no woman.
“I should like to watch here with you to-night,
O'Connor,” said Craig as we parted. “Meet us here.
In the meantime I shall call on Jameson with his well-
known newspaper connections in the white light dis-
trict,” here he gave me a half facetious wink, “to see
what he can do toward getting me admitted to this
gilded palace of dope up there on Forty-fourth
Street.”
After no little trouble Kennedy and I discovered
our “hop joint” and were admitted by Nichi Moto, of
whom we had heard. Kennedy gave me a final in-


The Opium Joint 171
junction to watch but to be very careful not to seem
to watch.
Nichi Moto with an eye to business and not to our
absorbing more than enough to whet our descriptive
powers quickly conducted us into a large room where,
on single bamboo couches or bunks, rather tastefully
made, perhaps half a dozen habitués lay stretched
at full length smoking their pipes in peace, or prepar-
ing them in great expectation from the implements
on the trays before them.
Kennedy relieved me of the responsibility of cook-
ing the opium by doing it for both of us and, inci-
dentally, dropping a hint not to inhale it and to
breathe as little of it as possible. Even then it made
me feel badly, though he must have contrived in some
way to get even less of the stuff than I. A couple of
pipes, and Kennedy beckoned to Nichi.
“Where is Mr. Clendenin?” he asked familiarly.
“I haven’t seen him yet.”
The Japanese smiled his engaging smile. “Not
know,” was all he said, and yet I knew the fellow at
least knew better English, if not more facts.
Kennedy had about started on our faking a third
“pipe” when a new, unexpected arrival beckoned ex-
citedly to Nichi. I could not catch all that was said
but two words that I did catch were “the boss” and
“hop toy,” the latter the word for opium. No sooner
had the man disappeared without joining the smokers
than Nichi seemed to grow very restless and anxious.
Evidently he had received orders to do something.
He seemed anxious to close the place and get away.
I thought that some one might have given a tip that


172 The Dream Doctor
the place was to be raided, but Kennedy, who had
been closer, had overheard more than I had and
among other things he had caught the word, “meet
him at the same place.”
It was not long before we were all politely hustled
Out.
“At least we know this,” commented Kennedy, as
I congratulated myself on our fortunate escape,
“Clendenin was not there, and there is something do-
ing to-night, for he has sent for Nichi.”
We dropped into our apartment to freshen up a bit
against the long vigil that we knew was coming that
night. To our surprise Walker Curtis had left a mes-
sage that he wished to see Kennedy immediately and
alone, and although I was not present I give the sub-
stance of what he said. It seemed that he had not
wished to tell O’Connor for fear that it would get
into the papers and cause an even greater scandal,
but it had come to his knowledge a few days before
the tragedy that his sister was determined to marry
a very wealthy Chinese merchant, an importer of tea,
named Chin Jung. Whether or not this had any
bearing on the case he did not know. He thought it
had, because for a long time, both when she was on
the stage and later, Clendenin had had a great influ-
ence over her and had watched with a jealous eye the
advances of every one else. Curtis was especially
bitter against Clendenin.
As Kennedy related the conversation to me on our
way over to Staten Island I tried to piece the thing
together, but like one of the famous Chinese puzzles,
it would not come out. I had to admit the possibility
* *


The Opium Joint 173
that it was Clendenin who might have quarrelled over
her attachment to Chin Jung, even though I have
never yet been able to understand what the fascina-
tion is that some Orientals have over certain Ameri-
can girls.
All that night we watched patiently from a vantage
point of an old shed near both the house and *o de-
cayed pier. It was weird in the extreme, especially
as we had no idea what might happen if we had suc-
cess and saw something. But there was no reward
for our patience. Absolutely nothing happened. It
was as though they knew, whoever they were, that we
were there. During the hours that passed O’Connor
whiled away the time in a subdued whisper now and
then in telling us of his experiences in Chinatown
which he was now engaged in trying to clean up.
From Chinatown, its dens, its gamblers and its tongs
we drifted to the legitimate business interests there,
and I, at least, was surprised to find that there were
some of the merchants for whom even O'Connor had
a great deal of respect. Kennedy evidently did not
wish to violate in any way the confidence of Walker
Curtis, and mention of the name of Chin Jung, but
by a judicious question as to who the best men were
in the Celestial settlement he did get a list of half a
dozen or so from O’Connor. Chin Jung was well up
in the list. However, the night wore away and still
nothing happened.
It was in the middle of the morning when we were
taking a snatch of sleep in our own rooms uptown
that the telephone began to ring insistently. Ken-
nedy, who was resting, I verily believe, merely out


The Opium Joint 175
the On Leong Tong, those ancient societies of trouble-
makers in the little district, had broken out afresh
during the day and three Orientals had been killed
already.
It is not a particularly pleasant occupation cruis-
ing aimlessly up and down the harbour in a fifty-foot
police boat, staunch and fast as she may be.
Every hour we called at a police post to report and
to keep in touch with anything that might interest
us. It came at about two o'clock in the morning
and of all places, near the Battery itself. From the
front ºf a ferry boat that ran far down on the Brook-
lyn ide, what looked like, two flashlights gleamed
Out over the water once, then twice.
“Headlights of an automobile,” remarked Craig,
scarcely taking more notice of it, for they might have
simply been turned up and down twice by a late re-
turning traveller to test them. We were ourselves
near the Brooklyn shore. Imagine our surprise to
See an answering light from a small boat in the river
which was otherwise lightless. We promptly put out
our own lights and with every cylinder working made
for the spot where the light had flashed up on the
river. There was something there all right and we
went for it.
On we raced after the strange craft, the phantom
that had scared Staten Island. For a mile or so we
seemed to be gaining, but one of our cylinders began
to miss—the boat turned sharply around a bend in
the shore. We had to give it up as well as trying
to overtake the ferry boat going in the opposite di-
rection.


176 The Dream Doctor
Kennedy’s equanimity in our apparent defeat sur-
prised me. “Oh, it's nothing, Walter,” he said.
“They slipped away to-night, but I have found the
clue. To-morrow as soon as the Customs EHouse is
open you will understand. It all centres about
opium.” -
At least a large part of the secret was cleared, too,
as a result of Kennedy's visit to the Customs House.
After years of fighting with the opium ring on the
Pacific coast, the ring had tried to “put one over”
on the revenue officers and smuggle the drug in
through New York.
It did not take long to find the right man among
the revenue officers to talk with. Nor was Kennedy
surprised to learn that Nichi Moto had been in fact a
Japanese detective, a sort of stool pigeon in Clenden-
in’s establishment working to keep the government
in touch with the latest scheme.
The finding of the can of opium on the scene of the
murder of Bertha Curtis, and the chase after the
lightless motor boat had at last placed Kennedy on
the right track. With one of the revenue officers we
made a quick trip to Brooklyn and spent the morning
inspecting the ships from South American ports
docked in the neighbourhood where the phantom boat
had disappeared.
From ship to ship we journeyed until at last we
came to one on which, down in the chain locker, we
found a false floor with a locker under that. There
was a compartment six feet square and in it lay, neatly
packed, fourteen large hermetically sealed cylinders,
each full of the little oblong tins such as Kennedy


The Opium Joint 177
had picked up the other day—forty thousand dollars'
worth of the stuff at one haul, to say nothing of the
thousands that had already been landed at one place
or another.
It had been a good day's work, but as yet it had
not caught the slayer or cleared up the mystery of
Bertha Curtis. Some one or something had had a
power over the girl to lure her on. Was it Clen-
denin? The place in Forty-fourth Street, on inquiry,
proved to be really closed as tight as a drum. Where
was he?
All the deaths had been mysterious, were still mys-
terious. Bertha Curtis had carried her Secret with
her to the grave to which she had been borne, will-
ingly it seemed, in the red car with the unknown com-
panion and the goggled chauffeur. I found myself
still asking what possible connection she could have
with smuggling opium.
Kennedy, however, was indulging in no such spec-
ulations. It was enough for him that the scene had
suddenly shifted and in a most unexpected manner.
I found him voraciously reading practically every-
thing that was being printed in the papers about the
revival of the tong war.
“They say much about the war, but little about the
cause,” was his dry comment. “I wish I could make
up my mind whether it is due to the closing of the
joints by O’Connor, or the belief that one tong is in-
forming on the other about opium smuggling.”
Kennedy passed over all the picturesque features
in the newspapers, and from it all picked out the one
point that was most important for the case which


178 The Dream Doctor
he was working to clear up. One tong used revolvers
of a certain make; the other of a different make.
The bullet which had killed Bertha Curtis and later
Nichi Moto was from a pistol like that of the Hep
Sings.
The difference in the makes of guns seemed at once
to suggest something to Kennedy and instead of mix-
ing actively in the war of the highbinders he retired
to his unfailing laboratory, leaving me to pass the
time gathering such information as I could. Once I
dropped in on him but found him unsociably sur-
rounded by microscopes and a very sensitive arrange-
ment for taking microphotographs. Some of his neg-
atives were nearly a foot in diameter, and might have
been, for all I knew, pictures of the surface of the
In OOIl. -
While I was there O'Connor came in. Craig ques-
tioned him about the war of the tongs.
“Why,” O’Connor cried, almost bubbling over with
satisfaction, “this afternoon I was waited on by Chin
Jung, you remember?—one of the leading merchants
down there. Of course you know that Chinatown
doesn’t believe in hurting business and it seems that
he and some of the others like him are afraid that if
the tong war is not hushed up pretty soon it will cost
a lot—in money. They are going to have an anniver-
sary of the founding of the Chinese republic soon and
of the Chinese New Year and they are afraid that if
the war doesn’t stop they’ll be ruined.”
“Which tong does he belong to?” asked Kennedy,
still scrutinising a photograph through his lens.
“Neither,” replied O'Connor. “With his aid and


The Opium Joint 179
that of a Judge of one of our courts who knows the
Chinaman like a book we have had a conference this
afternoon between the two tongs and the truce is re-
stored again for two weeks.”
“Very good,” answered Kennedy, “but it doesn't
catch the murderer of Bertha Curtis and the Jap.
Where is Clendenin, do you suppose?” -
“I don’t know, but it at least leaves me free to
carry on that case. What are all these pictures?”
“Well,” began Kennedy, taking his glass from his
eye and wiping it carefully, “a Paris crime specialist
has formulated a system for identifying revolver bul-
lets which is very like that of Dr. Bertillon for iden-
tifying human beings.”
He picked up a handful of the greatly enlarged
photographs. “These are photographs of bullets
which he has sent me. The barrel of every gun leaves
marks on the bullet that are always the same for the
same barrel but never identical for two different bar-
rels. In these big negatives every detail appears
very distinctly and it can be decided with absolute
certainty whether a given bullet was fired from a
given revolver. Now, using this same method, I have
made similar greatly enlarged photographs of the two
bullets that have figured so far in this case. The bul-
let that killed Miss Curtis shows the same marks as
that Which killed Nichi.”
He picked up another bunch of prints. “Now,”
he continued, “taking up the firing pin of a rifle or
the hammer of a revolver, you may not know it but
they are different in every case. Even among the
same makes they are different, and can be detected.


180 The Dream Doctor
“The cartridge in either a gun or revolver is struck
at a point which is never in the exact centre or edge,
as the case may be, but is always the same for the
same weapon. Now the end of the hammer when ex-
amined with the microscope bears certain irregulari-
ties of marking different from those of every other
gun and the shell fired in it is impressed with the par.
ticular markings of that hammer, just as paper is by
type. On making microphotographs of firing pins or
hammers, with special reference to the rounded ends
and also photographs of the corresponding rounded
depressions in the primers fired by them it is forced
on any one that cartridges fired by each individual
rifle or pistol can positively be identified.
“You will see on the edge of the photographs I
have made a rough sketch calling attention to the “L’.
shaped mark which is the chief characteristic of this
hammer, although there are other detailed markings
which show well under the microscope but not well
in a photograph. You will notice that the characters
on the firing hammer are reversed on the cartridge
in the same way that a metal type and the character
printed by it are reversed as regards one another.
Again, depressions on the end of the hammer become
raised characters on the cartridge, and raised char-
acters on the hammer become depressions on the car-
tridge.
“Look at some of these old photographs and you
will see that they differ from this. They lack the “L’
mark. Some have circles, others a very different
series of pits and elevations, a set of characters when
examined and measured under the microscope utterly


The Opium Joint I81
different from those in every other case. Each is
unique, in its pits, lines, circles and irregularities.
The laws of chance are as much against two of them
having the same markings as they are against the
thumb prints of two human subjects being identical.
The firing-pin theory, which was used in a famous
case in Maine, is just as infallible as the finger-print
theory. In this case when we find the owner of the
gun making an “L” mark we shall have the murderer.”
Something, I could see, was working on O'Connor's
mind. “That's all right,” he interjected, “but you
know in neither case was the victim shot to death.
They were asphyxiated.”
“I was coming to that,” rejoined Craig. “You re-
call the peculiar marking on the nose of those bullets?
They were what is known as narcotic bullets, an in-
vention of a Pittsburg scientist. They have the prop-
erty of lulling their victims to almost instant slum-
ber. A slight scratch from these sleep-producing
tullets is all that is necessary, as it was in the case
of the man who spied on the queer doings on Staten
Island. The drug, usually morphia, is carried in
tiny wells on the cap of the bullet, is absorbed by the
system and acts almost instantly.”
The door burst open and Walker Curtis strode in
excitedly. He seemed surprised to see us all there,
hesitated, then motioned to Kennedy that he wished
to see him. For a few moments they talked and
finally I caught the remark from Kennedy, “But, Mr.
Curtis, I must do it. It is the only way.”
Curtis gave a resigned nod and Kennedy turned to
us. “Gentlemen,” he said, “Mr. Curtis in going ovér


I82 The Dream Doctor
the effects of his sister has found a note from Clen-
denin which mentions another opium joint down in
Chinatown. He wished me to investigate privately,
but I have told him it would be impossible.”
At the mention of a den in the district he was clean-
ing up O’Connor had pricked up his ears. “Where
is it?” he demanded.
Curtis mentioned a number on Doyer Street.
“The Amoy restaurant,” ejaculated O'Connor, seiz.
ing the telephone. A moment later he was arrang-
ing with the captain at the Elizabeth Street station
for the warrants for an instant raid.


I84 The Dream Doctor
t
After breaking it down they had to claw their way
through another just like it. The thick doors and
tea chests piled up showed why no sounds of gambling
and other practices ever were heard outside.
Pushing aside a curtain we were in the main room.
The scene was one of confusion showing the hasty de-
parture of the occupants.
Kennedy did not stop here. Within was still an-
other room, for smokers, anything but like the fash-
ionable place we had seen uptown. It was low,
common, disgusting. The odour everywhere was
offensive; everywhere was filth that should naturally
breed disease. It was an inferno reeking with un-
wholesome sweat and still obscured with dense fumes
of smoke.
Three tiers of bunks of hardwood were built along
the walls. There was no glamour here; all was sor-
did. Several Chinamen in various stages of dazed
indolence were jabbering in incoherent oblivion, a
state I suppose of “Oriental calm.”
There, in a bunk, lay Clendenin. His slow and
uncertain breathing told of his being under the in-
fluence of the drug, and he lay on his back beside a
“layout” with a half-cooked pill still in the bowl of
his pipe.
The question was to wake him up. Craig began
slapping him with a wet towel, directing us how to
keep him roused. We walked him about, up and
down, dazed, less than half sensible, dreaming, mut-
tering, raving.
A hasty exclamation from O'Connor followed as
he drew from the scant cushions of the bunk a long-


The “Dope Trust” I85
barreled pistol, a .44 such as the tong leaders used,
the same make as had shot Bertha Curtis and Nichi.
Craig seized it and stuck it into his pocket.
All the gamblers had fled, all except those too
drugged to escape. Where they had gone was indi-
cated by a door leading up to the kitchen of the res-
taurant. Craig did not stop but leaped upstairs and
then down again into a little back court by means of a
fire-escape. Through a sort of short alley we groped
our way, or rather through an intricate maze of alleys
and a labyrinth of blind recesses. We were appar-
ently back of a store on Pell Street.
It was the work of only a moment to go through
another door and into another room, filled with
smoky, dirty, unpleasant, fetid air. This room, too,
seemed to be piled with tea chests. Craig opened
one. There lay piles and piles of opium tins, a verit-
able fortune in the drug.
Mysterious pots and pans, strainers, wooden ves-
sels, and testing instruments were about. The odour
of opium in the manufacture was unmistakable, for
smoking opium is different from the medicinal drug.
There it appeared the supplies of thousands of smok-
ers all over the country were stored and prepared. In
a corner a mass of the finished product lay weltering
in a basin like treacle. In another corner was the
apparatus for remaking yen-shee or once-smoked
opium. This I felt was at last the home of the “dope
trust,” as O’Connor had once called it, the secret
realm of a real opium king, the American end of the
rich Shanghai syndicate.
A door opened and there stood a Chinaman, sto-


I86 The Dream Doctor
ical, secretive, indifferent, with all the Oriental cun-
ning and cruelty hall-marked on his face. Yet there
was a fascination and air of Eastern culture about
him in spite of that strange and typical Oriental
depth of intrigue and cunning that shone through,
great characteristics of the East.
No one said a word as Kennedy continued to ran-
sack the place. At last under a rubbish heap he
found a revolver wrapped up loosely in an old sweater.
Quickly, under the bright light, Craig drew Clenden-
in’s pistol, fitted a cartridge into it and fired at the
wall. Again into the second gun he fitted another
and a second shot rang out.
Out of his pocket came next the small magnifying
glass and two unmounted microphotographs. He
bent down over the exploded shells.
“There it is,” cried Craig scarcely able to restrain
himself with the keenness of his chase, “there it is—
the mark like an ‘L.’ This cartridge bears the one
mark, distinct, not possible to have been made by any
other pistol in the world. None of the Hep Sings, all
with the same make of weapons, none of the gunmen
in their employ, could duplicate that mark.”
“Some bullets,” reported a policeman who had been
rummaging further in the rubbish.
“Be careful, man,” cautioned Craig. “They are
doped. Lay them down. Yes, this is the same gun
that fired the shot at Bertha Curtis and Nichi Moto
—fired narcotic bullets in order to stop any one who
interfered with the opium smuggling, without killing
the victim.”
“What's the matter?” asked O'Connor, arriving


The “Dope Trust” 187
breathless from the gambling room after hearing the
shots. The Chinaman stood, still silent, impassive.
At sight of him O’Connor gasped out, “Chin Jung!”
“Real tong leader,” added Craig, “and the mur-
derer of the white girl to whom he was engaged. This
is the goggled chauffeur of the red car that met the
smuggling boat, and in which Bertha Curtis rode, un-
suspecting, to her death.”
“And Clendenin?” asked Walker Curtis, not com-
prehending.
“A tool—poor wretch. So keen had the hunt for
him become that he had to hide in the only safe place,
with the coolies of his employer. He must have been
in such abject terror that he has almost smoked him-
self to death.”
“But why should the Chinaman shoot my sister?”
asked Walker Curtis amazed at the turn of events.
“Your sister,” replied Craig, almost reverently,
“wrecked though she was by the drug, was at last
conscience stricken when she saw the vast plot to
debauch thousands of others. It was from her that
the Japanese detective in the revenue service got his
information—and both of them have paid the price.
But they have smashed the new opium ring—we have
captured the ring-leaders of the gang.”
Out of the maze of streets, on Chatham Square
again, we lost no time in mounting to the safety of
the elevated station before some murderous tong mem-
ber might seek revenge on us.
The celebration in Chinatown was stilled. It was
as though the nerves of the place had been paralysed
by our sudden, sharp blow.
*


I88 The Dream Doctor
A downtown train took me to the office to write
a “beat,” for the Star always made a special feature
of the picturesque in Chinatown news. Kennedy
went uptown.
Except for a few moments in the morning, I did
not see Kennedy again until the following afternoon,
for the tong war proved to be such an interesting
feature that I had to help lay out and direct the as-
signments covering its various details.
I managed to get away again as soon as possible,
however, for I knew that it would not be long before
some one else in trouble would commandeer Kennedy
to untangle a mystery, and I wanted to be on the spot
when it started.
Sure enough, it turned out that I was right.
Seated with him in our living room, when I came in
from my hasty journey uptown in the subway, was
a man, tall, thick-set, with a crop of closely curling
dark hair, a sharp, pointed nose, ferret eyes, and a
reddish moustache, curled at the ends. I had no dif-
ficulty in deciding what he was, if not who he was.
He was the typical detective who, for the very reason
that he looked the part, destroyed much of his own
usefulness.
“We have lost so much lately at Trimble's,” he was
saying, “that it is long past the stage of being merely
interesting. It is downright serious—for me, at
least. I’ve got to make good or lose my job. And
I’m up against one of the cleverest shoplifters that
ever entered a department-store, apparently. Only
Heaven knows how much she has got away with in
various departments so far, but when it comes to lift-


The “Dope Trust” 189
ing valuable things like pieces of jewelry which run
into the thousands, that is too much.”
At the mention of the name of the big Trimble store
I had recognised at once what the man was, and it
did not need Kennedy's rapid-fire introduction of
Michael Donnelly to tell me that he was a depart-
ment store detective.
“Have you no clue, no suspicions?” inquired Ken-
nedy.
“Well, yes, suspicions,” measured Donnelly slowly.
“For instance, one day not long ago a beautifully
dressed and refined-looking woman called at the jew-
ellery department and asked to see a diamond neck-
lace which we had just imported from Paris. She
seemed to admire it very much, studied it, tried it
on, but finally went away without making up her
mind. A couple of days later she returned and asked
to see it again. This time there happened to be an-
other woman beside her who was looking at some pen-
dants. The two fell to talking about the necklace,
according to the best recollection of the clerk, and the
second woman began to examine it critically. Again
the prospective buyer went away. But this time after
she had gone, and when he was putting the things
back into the safe, the clerk examined the necklace,
thinking that perhaps a flaw had been discovered in
it which had decided the woman against it. It was
a replica in paste; probably substituted by one of
these clever and smartly dressed women for the real
necklace.”
Before Craig had a chance to put another question,
the buzzer on our door sounded, and I admitted a


I90 The Dream Doctor
dapper, soft-spoken man of middle size, who might
have been a travelling salesman or a bookkeeper. He
pulled a card from his case and stood facing us, evi-
dently in doubt how to proceed.
“Professor Kennedy?” he asked at length, balanc-
ing the pasteboard between his fingers.
“Yes,” answered Craig. “What can I do for you?”
“I am from Shorham, the Fifth Avenue jeweller,
you know,” he began brusquely, as he handed the card
to Kennedy. “I thought I'd drop in to consult you
about a peculiar thing that happened at the store re-
cently, but if you are engaged, I can wait. You see,
we had on exhibition a very handsome pearl dog-
collar, and a few days ago two women came to-"
“Say,” interrupted Kennedy, glancing from the
card to the face of Joseph Bentley, and then at Don-
nelly. “What is this—a gathering of the clans?
There seems to be an epidemic of shoplifting. How
much were you stung for?”
“About twenty thousand altogether,” replied Bent-
ley with rueful frankness. “Why? Has some one
else been victimised, too?”


XIII
The Kleptomaniac
UICKLY Kennedy outlined, with Donnelly's
permission, the story we had just heard. The
two store detectives saw the humour of the situation,
as well as the seriousness of it, and fell to comparing
notes.
“The professional as well as the amateur shop-
lifter has always presented to me an interesting phase
of criminality,” remarked Kennedy tentatively, dur-
ing a lull in their mutual commiseration. “With
thousands of dollars’ worth of goods lying unpro-
tected on the counters, it is really no wonder that
Some are tempted to reach out and take what they
Want.”
“Yes,” explained Donnelly, “the shop-lifter is the
department-store's greatest unsolved problem. Why,
sir, she gets more plunder in a year than the burglar.
She's costing the stores over two million dollars.
And she is at her busiest just now with the season's
shopping in full swing. It's the price the stores have
to pay for displaying their goods, but we have to do
it, and we are at the mercy of the thieves. I don’t
mean by that the occasional shoplifter who, when she
gets caught, confesses, cries, pleads, and begs to re-
turn the stolen article. They often get off. It is the
regulars who get the two million, those known to the

191


I92 The Dream Doctor
police, whose pictures are, many of them, in the
Rogues' Gallery, whose careers and haunts are known
to every probation officer. They are getting away
with loot that means for them a sumptuous living.”
“Of course we are not up against the same sort of
swindlers that you are,” put in Bentley, “but let me
tell you that when the big jewelers do get up against
anything of the sort they are up against it hard.”
“Have you any idea who it could be?” asked Ken-
nedy, who had been following the discussion keenly.
“Well, some idea,” spoke up Donnelly. “From
what Bentley says I wouldn’t be surprised to find that
it was the same person in both cases. Of course you
know how rushed all the stores are just now. It is
much easier for these light-fingered individuals to
operate during the rush than at any other time. In
the summer, for instance, there is almost no shop-
lifting at all. I thought that perhaps we could dis-
cover this particular shoplifter by ordinary means,
that perhaps some of the clerks in the jewellery de-
partment might be able to identify her. We found
one who said that he thought he might recognise one
of the women if he saw her again. Perhaps you did
not know that we have our own little rogues' gallery
in most of the big department-stores. But there
didn’t happen to be anything there that he recognised.
So I took him down to Police Headquarters. Through
plate after plate of pictures among the shoplifters
in the regular Rogues' Gallery the clerk went. At
last he came to one picture that caused him to stop.
*That is one of the women I saw in the store that
day,” he said. “I’m sure of it.’”


The Kleptomaniac I93
Donnelly produced a copy of the Bertillon picture.
“What?” exclaimed Bentley, as he glanced at it
and then at the name and history on the back. “An-
nie Grayson? Why, she is known as the queen of
shoplifters. She has operated from Christie's in
London to the little curio-shops of San Francisco.
She has worked under a dozen aliases and has the art
of alibi down to perfection. Oh, I’ve heard of her
many times before. I wonder if she really is the per-
son we’re looking for. They say that Annie Grayson
has forgotten more about shoplifting than the others
will ever know.”
“Yes,” continued Donnelly, “and here's the queer
part of it. The clerk was ready to swear that he had
seen the woman in the store at some time or other,
but whether she had been near the counter where the
necklace was displayed was another matter. He
wasn’t so sure about that.”
“Then how did she get it?” I asked, much inter-
ested.
“I don't say that she did get it,” cautioned Don-
nelly. “I don’t know anything about it. That is
why I am here consulting Professor Kennedy.”
“Then who did get it, do you think?” I demanded.
“We have a great deal of very conflicting testimony
from the various clerks,” Donnelly continued.
“Among those who are known to have visited the de-
partment and to have seen the necklace is another
woman, of an entirely different character, well known
in the city.” He glanced sharply at us, as if to im-
press us with what he was about to say, then he
leaned over and almost whispered the name. “As


194 The Dream Doctor
nearly as I can gather out of the mass of evidence,
Mrs. William Willoughby, the wife of the broker
down in Wall Street, was the last person who was
seen looking at the diamonds.”
The mere breath of such a suspicion would have
been enough, without his stage-whisper method of
imparting the information. I felt that it was no won-
der that, having even a suspicion of this sort, he
should be in doubt how to go ahead and should wish
Kennedy’s advice. Ella Willoughby, besides being
the wife of one of the best known operators in high-
class stocks and bonds, was well known in the society
columns of the newspapers. She lived in Glenclair,
where she was a leader of the smarter set at both the
church and the country club. The group who pre-
served this neat balance between higher things and
the world, the flesh and the devil, I knew to be a very
exclusive group, which, under the calm suburban sur-
face, led a sufficiently rapid life. Mrs. Willoughby,
in addition to being a leader, was a very striking
woman and a beautiful dresser, who set a fast pace
for the semi-millionaires who composed the group.
Here indeed was a puzzle at the very start of the
case. It was in all probability Mrs. Willoughby who
had looked at the jewels in both cases. On the other
hand, it was Annie Grayson who had been seen on
at least one occasion, yet apparently had had nothing
whatever to do with the missing jewels, at least not
so far as any tangible evidence yet showed. More
than that, Donnelly vouchsafed the information that
he had gone further and that some of the men work-


The Kleptomaniac I95
ing under him had endeavoured to follow the move-
ments of the two women and had found what looked
to be a curious crossing of trails. Both of them, he
had found, had been in the habit of visiting, while
shopping, the same little tea-room on Thirty-third
Street, though no one had ever seen them together
there, and the coincidence might be accounted for
by the fact that many Glenclair ladies on shopping
expeditions made this tea-room a sort of rendezvous.
By inquiring about among his own fraternity Don-
nelly had found that other stores also had reported
losses recently, mostly of diamonds and pearls, both
black and white.
Kennedy had been pondering the situation for
some time, scarcely uttering a word. Both detectives
were now growing restless, waiting for him to say
something. As for me, I knew that if anything were
Said or done it would be in Kennedy's own good time.
I had learned to have implicit faith and confidence
in him, for I doubt if Craig could have been placed
in a situation where he would not know just what
to do after he had looked over the ground.
At length he leisurely reached across the table for
the suburban telephone book, turned the pages
quickly, snapped it shut, and observed wearily and,
as it seemed, irrelevantly: “The same old trouble
again about accurate testimony. I doubt whether if
I should suddenly pull a revolver and shoot Jame-
son, either of you two men could give a strictly ac-
curate account of just what happened.”
No one said anything, as he raised his hands from


I96 The Dream Doctor
his habitual thinking posture with finger-tips to-
gether, placed both hands back of his head, and
leaned back facing us squarely.
“The first step,” he said slowly, “must be to ar-
range a ‘plant.” As nearly as I can make out the
shoplifters or shoplifter, whichever it may prove to
be, have no hint that any one is watching them yet.
Now, Donnelly, it is still very early. I want you to
telephone around to the newspapers, and either in the
Trimble advertisements or in the news columns have
it announced that your jewellery department has on
exhibition a new and special importation of South
African stones among which is one—let me see, let's
call it the ‘Kimberley Queen.” That will sound at-
tractive. In the meantime find the largest and most
perfect paste jewel in town and have it fixed up for
exhibition and labelled the Kimberley Queen. Give
it a history if you can; anything to attract attention.
I’ll see you in the morning. Good-night, and thank
you for coming to me with this case.”
It was quite late, but Kennedy, now thoroughly in-
terested in following the chase, had no intention of
waiting until the morrow before taking action on his
own account. In fact he was just beginning the
evening's work by sending Donnelly off to arrange
the “plant.” No less interested in the case than him-
self, I needed no second invitation, and in a few min-
utes we were headed from our rooms toward the lab-
oratory, where Kennedy had apparatus to meet al-
most any conceivable emergency. From a shelf in
the corner he took down an oblong oak box, perhaps
eighteen inches in length, in the front of which was


The Kleptomaniac I97
set a circular metal disk with a sort of pointer and
dial. He lifted the lid of the box, and inside I could
see two shiny caps which in turn he lifted, disclosing
what looked like two good-sized spools of wire. Ap-
parently satisfied with his scrutiny, he snapped the
lid shut and wrapped up the box carefully, consign-
ing it to my care, while he hunted some copper wire.
From long experience with Kennedy I knew bet-
ter than to ask what he had in mind to do. It was
enough to know that he had already, in those few
minutes of apparent dreaming while Donnelly and
Bentley were fidgeting for words, mapped out a com-
plete course of action.
We bent our steps toward the under-river tube,
which carried a few late travellers to the rail, oad
terminal where Kennedy purchased tickets for Glen-
clair. I noticed that the conductor on the suburban
train eyed us rather suspiciously as though the mere
fact that we were not travelling with commutation
tickets at such an hour constituted an offence. Al-
though I did not yet know the precise nature of our
adventure, I remembered with some misgiving that
I had read of police dogs in Glenclair which were
uncomfortably familiar with strangers carrying bun-
dles. However, we got along all right, perhaps be-
cause the dogs knew that in a town of commuters
every one was privileged to carry a bundle.
“If the Willoughbys had been on a party line,” re-
marked Craig as we strode up Woodridge Avenue
trying to look as if it was familiar to us, “we might
have arranged this thing by stratagem. As it is, we
shall have to resort to another method, and perhaps


I98 The Dream Doctor
better, since we shall have to take no one into our
confidence.” -
The avenue was indeed a fine thoroughfare, lined
on both sides with large and often imposing mansions,
surrounded with trees and shrubbery, which served
somewhat to screen them. We came at last to the
Willoughby house, a sizable colonial residence set up
on a hill. It was dark, except for one dim light in
an upper story. In the shadow of the hedge, Craig
silently vaulted the low fence and slipped up the ter.
races, as noiselessly as an Indian, scarcely crackling
a twig or rustling a dead leaf on the ground. He
paused as he came to a wing on the right of the house.
I had followed more laboriously, carrying the box
and noting that he was not looking so much at the
house as at the sky, apparently. It did not take long
to fathom what he was after. It was not a star-gaz-
ing expedition; he was following the telephone wire
that ran in from the street to the corner of the house
near which we were now standing. A moment's in-
spection showed him where the wire was led down
on the outside and entered through the top of a win-
dow.
Quickly he worked, though in a rather awkward
position, attaching two wires carefully to the tele-
phone wires. Next he relieved me of the oak box
with its strange contents, and placed it under the
porch where it was completely hidden by some lattice-
work which extended down to the ground on this side.
Then he attached the new wires from the telephone
to it and hid the connecting wires as best he could
behind the swaying runners of a vine. At last, when


The Kleptomaniac I99
he had finished to his satisfaction, we retraced our
steps, to find that our only chance of getting out of
town that night was by trolley that landed us, after
many changes, in our apartment in New York, thor-
oughly convinced of the disadvantages of suburban
detective work.
Nevertheless the next day found us out sleuthing
about Glenclair, this time in a more pleasant rôle.
We had a newspaper friend or two out there who
was willing to introduce us about without asking too
many questions. Kennedy, of course, insisted on be-
ginning at the very headquarters of gossip, the coun-
try club.
We spent several enjoyable hours about the town,
picking up a good deal of miscellaneous and useless
information. It was, however, as Kennedy had sus-
pected. Annie Grayson had taken up her residence
in an artistic little house on one of the best side streets
of the town. But her name was no longer Annie
Grayson. She was Mrs. Maud Emery, a dashing
young widow of some means, living in a very quiet
but altogether comfortable style, cutting quite a fig-
ure in the exclusive suburban community, a leading
member of the church circle, an officer of the Civic
League, prominent in the women's club, and popular
with those to whom the established order of things
was so perfect that the only new bulwark of their
rights was an anti-suffrage society. In fact, every
one was talking of the valuable social acquisition in
the person of this attractive young woman who en-
tertained lavishly and was bracing up an otherwise
drooping season. No one knew much about her, but
4


200 The Dream Doctor
then, that was not necessary. It was enough to ac-
cept one whose opinions and actions were not sub-
versive of the social order in any way.
The Willoughbys, of course, were among the most
prominent people in the town. William Willoughby
was head of the firm of Willoughby & Walton, and it
was the general opinion that Mrs. Willoughby was
the head of the firm of Ella & William Willoughby.
The Willoughbys were good mixers, and were spoken
well of even by the set who occupied the social
stratum just one degree below that in which they
themselves moved. In fact, when Mrs. Willoughby
had been severely injured in an automobile accident
during the previous summer Glenclair had shown real
solicitude for her and had forgotten a good deal of
its artificiality in genuine human interest.
Kennedy was impatiently waiting for an oppor-
tunity to recover the box which he had left under the
Willoughby porch. Several times we walked past
the house, but it was not until nightfall that he con-
sidered it wise to make the recovery. Again we
slipped silently up the terraces. It was the work of
only a moment to cut the wires, and in triumph Craig
bore off the precious oak box and its batteries.
He said little on our journey back to the city, but
the moment we had reached the laboratory he set the
box on a table with an attachment which seemed to
be controlled by pedals operated by the feet.
“Walter,” he explained, holding what looked like
an earpiece in his hand, “this is another of those new
little instruments that scientific detectives to-day are
using. A poet might write a clever little verse en-


202 The Dream Doctor
Craig continued to tinker tantalisingly with the
machine.
“The principle on which it is based,” he added, “is
that a mass of tempered steel may be impressed with
and will retain magnetic fluxes varying in density and
in sign in adjacent portions of its mass. There are
no indentations on the wire or the steel disk. In-
stead there is a deposit of magnetic impulse on the
wire, which is made by connecting up an ordinary
telephone transmitter with the electromagnets and
talking through the coil. The disturbance set up in
the coils by the vibration of the diaphragm of the
transmitter causes a deposit of magnetic impulse
on the wire, the coils being connected with dry
batteries. When the wire is again run past these
coils, with a receiver such as I have here in circuit
with the coils, a light vibration is set up in the
receiver diaphragm which reproduces the sound of
speech.”
He turned a switch and placed an ear-piece over
his head, giving me another connected with it. We
listened eagerly. There were no foreign noises in the
machine, no grating or thumping sounds, as he con-
trolled the running off of the steel wire by means of
a foot-pedal.
We were listening to everything that had been said
over the Willoughby telephone during the day. Sev-
eral local calls to tradesmen came first, and these
we passed over quickly. Finally we heard the fol-
lowing conversation:
“Hello. Is that you, Ella? Yes, this is Maud.
Good-morning. How do you feel to-day?”
ºrſ/


204 The Dream Doctor
Craig stopped the machine, ran it back again and
repeated the record. “So,” he commented at the con-
clusion of the repetition, “the ‘plant' has taken root.
Annie Grayson has bitten at the bait.”
A few other local calls and a long-distance call from
Mr. Willoughby cut short by his not finding his wife
at home followed. Then there seemed to have been
nothing more until after dinner. It was a call by
Mr. Willoughby himself that now interested us.
“Hello! hello! Is that you, Dr. Guthrie? Well,
Doctor, this is Mr. Willoughby talking. I'd like to
make an appointment for my wife to-morrow.”
“Why, what's the trouble, Mr. Willoughby? Noth-
ing serious, I hope.”
“Oh, no, I guess not. But then I want to be sure,
and I guess you can fix her up all right. She com-
plains of not being able to sleep and has been having
pretty bad headaches now and then.”
“Is that so? Well, that's too bad. These women
and their headaches—even as a doctor they puzzle
me. They often go away as suddenly as they come.
However, it will do no harm to see me.”
“And then she complains of noises in her ears,
seems to hear things, though as far as I can make
out, there is nothing—at least nothing that I hear.”
“Um-m, hallucinations in hearing, I suppose. Any
dizziness?”
“Why, yes, a little once in a while.”
“EHOW is she now?”
“Well, she's been into town this afternoon and is
pretty tired, but she says she feels a little better for
the excitement of the trip.”


The Kleptomaniac 205
“Well, let me see. I’ve got to come down Wood-
ridge Avenue to see a patient in a few minutes any-
how. Suppose I just drop off at your place?”
“That will be fine. You don’t think it is anything
serious, do you, Doctor?”
“Oh, no. Probably it's her nerves. Perhaps a lit-
tle rest would do her good. We’ll see.”
The telegraphone stopped, and that seemed to be
the last conversation recorded. So far we had
learned nothing very startling, I thought, and was
just a little disappointed. Kennedy seemed well sat-
isfied, however.
Our own telephone rang, and it proved to be Don-
nelly on the wire. He had been trying to get Kennedy
all day, in order to report that at various times his
men at Trimble's had observed Mrs. Willoughby and
later Annie Grayson looking with much interest at
the Kimberley Queen, and other jewels in the exhibit.
There was nothing more to report.
“Keep it on view another day or two,” ordered
Kennedy. “Advertise it, but in a quiet way. We
don’t want too many people interested. I’ll see you
in the morning at the store—early.”
“I think I'll just run back to Glenclair again to-
night,” remarked Kennedy as he hung up the receiver.
“You needn’t bother about coming, Walter. I want
to see Dr. Guthrie a moment. You remember him?
We met him to-day at the country club, a kindly look-
ing, middle-aged fellow?”
I would willingly have gone back with him, but I
felt that I could be of no particular use. While he
was gone I pondered a good deal over the situation.


206 The Dream Doctor
Twice, at least, previously some one had pilfered jew-
ellery from stores, leaving in its place worthless imita-
tions. Twice the evidence had been so conflicting
that no one could judge of its value. What reason,
I asked myself, was there to suppose that it would be
different now? No shoplifter in her senses was
likely to lift the great Kimberley Queen gem with
the eagle eyes of clerks and detectives on her, even if
she did not discover that it was only a paste jewel.
And if Craig gave the woman, whoever she was, a
good opportunity to get away with it, it would be a
case of the same conflicting evidence; or worse, no
evidence.
Yet the more I thought of it, the more apparent
to me was it that Kennedy must have thought the
whole thing out before. So far all that had been
evident was that he was merely preparing a “plant.”
Still, I meant to caution him when he returned that
one could not believe his eyes, certainly not his ears,
as to what might happen, unless he was unusually
skilful or lucky. It would not do to rely on any-
thing so fallible as the human eye or ear, and I meant
to impress it on him. What, after all, had been the
net result of our activities so far? We had found
next to nothing. Indeed, it was all a greater mystery
than ever. -
It was very late when Craig returned, but I gath-
ered from the still fresh look on his face that he had
been successful in whatever it was he had had in mind
when he made the trip.
“I saw Dr. Guthrie,” he reported laconically, as
we prepared to turn in. “He says that he isn’t quite


The Kleptomaniac 207
sure but that Mrs. Willoughby may have a touch of
vertigo. At any rate, he has consented to let me come
out to-morrow with him and visit her as a specialist
in nervous diseases from New York. I had to tell
him just enough about the case to get him interested,
but that will do no harm. I think I’ll set this alarm
an hour ahead. I want to get up early to-morrow,
and if I shouldn’t be here when you wake, you’ll find
me at Trimble’s.”


XIV
The Crimeometer
THE alarm wakened me all right, but to my sur-
prise Kennedy had already gone, ahead of it.
I dressed hurriedly, bolted an early breakfast, and
made my way to Trimble's. He was not there, and
I had about concluded to try the laboratory, when
I saw him pulling up in a cab from which he took
several packages. Donnelly had joined us by this
time, and together we rode up in the elevator to the
jewelry department. I had never seen a department-
store when it was empty, but I think I should like
to shop in one under those conditions. It seemed in-
credible to get into the elevator and go directly to
the floor you wanted.
The jewelry department was in the front of the
building on one of the upper floors, with wide win-
dows through which the bright morning light
streamed attractively on the glittering wares that
the clerks were taking out of the safes and disposing
to their best advantage. The store had not opened
yet, and we could work unhampered.
From his packages, Kennedy took three black
boxes. They seemed to have an opening in front,
while at one side was a little crank, which, as nearly
as I could make out, was operated by clockwork re-
leased by an electric contact. His first problem
208


The Crimeometer 209
seemed to be to dispose the boxes to the best advan-
tage at various angles about the counter where the
Kimberley Queen was on exhibition. With so much
bric-à-brac and other large articles about, it did not
appear to be very difficult to conceal the boxes, which
were perhaps four inches square on the ends and eight
inches deep. From the boxes with the clockwork at-
tachment at the side he led wires, centring at a point
at the interior end of the aisle where we could see
but would hardly be observed by any one standing
at the jewelry counter.
Customers had now begun to arrive, and we took
a position in the background, prepared for a long
wait. Now and then Donnelly casually sauntered
past us. He and Craig had disposed the store detec-
tives in a certain way so as to make their presence
less obvious, while the clerks had received instruc-
tions how to act under the circumstance that a sus-
picious person was observed.
Once when Donnelly came up he was quite excited.
He had just received a message from Bentley that
some of the stolen property, the pearls, probably,
from the dog collar that had been taken from Shor-
ham's, had been offered for sale by a “fence” known
to the police as a former confederate of Annie Gray-
SOIl.
“You see, that is one great trouble with them all,”
he remarked, with his eye roving about the store in
search of anything irregular. “A shoplifter rarely
becomes a habitual criminal until after she passes
the age of twenty-five. If they pass that age without
quitting, there is little hope of their getting right


210 The Dream Doctor
again, as you see. For by that time they have long
since begun to consort with thieves of the other sex.”
The hours dragged heavily, though it was a splen-
did chance to observe at leisure the psychology of
the shopper who looked at much and bought little,
the uncomfortableness of the men who had been
dragged to the department store slaughter to say
“Yes” and foot the bills, a kaleidoscopic throng which
might have been interesting if we had not been so
intent on only one matter. -
Kennedy grasped my elbow in vise-like fingers.
Involuntarily I looked down at the counter where
the Kimberley Queen reposed in all the trappings of
genuineness. Mrs. Willoughby had arrived again.
We were too far off to observe distinctly just what
was taking place, but evidently Mrs. Willoughby was
looking at the gem. A moment later another woman
sauntered casually up to the counter. Even at a dis-
tance I recognised Annie Grayson. As nearly as I
could make out they seemed to exchange remarks.
The clerk answered a question or two, then began to
search for something apparently to show them.
Every one about them was busy, and, obedient to in-
structions from Donnelly, the store detectives were in
the background. -
Kennedy was leaning forward watching as intently
as the distance would permit. He reached over and
pressed the button near him.
After a minute or two the second woman ſeft, fol-
lowed shortly by Mrs. Willoughby herself. We hur-
ried over to the counter, and Kennedy seized the box
containing the Kimberley Queen. He examined it


The Crimeometer 211
carefully. A flaw in the paste jewel caught his eye.
“There has been a substitution here,” he cried.
“See: The paste jewel which we used was flawless;
this has a little carbon spot here on the side.”
“One of my men has been detailed to follow each
of them,” whispered Donnelly. “Shall I order them
to bring Mrs. Willoughby and Annie Grayson to the
superintendent's office and have them searched?”
“No,” Craig almost shouted. “That would spoil
everything. Don’t make a move until I get at the
real truth of this affair.”
The case was becoming more than ever a puzzle to
me, but there was nothing left for me to do but to
wait until Kennedy was ready to accompany Dr.
Guthrie to the Willoughby house. Several times he
tried to reach the doctor by telephone, but it was not
until the middle of the afternoon that he succeeded.
“I shall be quite busy the rest of the afternoon,
Walter,” remarked Craig, after he had made his ap-
pointment with Dr. Guthrie. “If you will meet me
out at the Willoughbys' at about eight o'clock, I shall
be much obliged to you.”
I promised, and tried to devote myself to catching
up with my notes, which were always sadly behind
when Kennedy had an important case. I did not
succeed in accomplishing much, however.
Dr. Guthrie himself met me at the door of the
beautiful house on Woodridge Avenue and with a
hearty handshake ushered me into the large room in
the right wing outside of which we had placed the
telegraphone two nights before. It was the library.
We found Kennedy arranging an instrument in the


212 The Dream Doctor
music-room which adjoined the library. From what
little knowledge I have of electricity I should have
said it was, in part at least, a galvanometer, one of
those instruments which register the intensity of
minute electric currents. As nearly as I could make
out, in this case the galvanometer was so arranged
that its action swung to one side or the other a little
concave mirror hung from a framework which rested
on the table. Directly in front of it was an electric
light, and the reflection of the light was caught in
the mirror and focused by its concavity upon a point
to one side of the light. Back of it was a long strip
of ground glass and an arrow point, attached to which
was a pen which touched a roll of paper.
On the large table in the library itself Kennedy had
placed in the centre a transverse board partition, high
enough so that two people seated could see each
other's faces and converse over it, but could not see
each other's hands. On one side of the partition
were two metal domes which were fixed to a board
set on the table. On the other side, in addition to
space on which he could write, Kennedy had arranged
what looked like one of these new miniature moving-
picture apparatuses operated by electricity. Indeed,
I felt that it must be that, for directly in front of it,
hanging on the wall, in plain view of any one seated
on the side of the table containing the metal domes,
was a large white sheet. -
The time for the experiment, whatever its nature
might be, had at last arrived, and Dr. Guthrie intro-
duced Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby to us as specialists
whom he had persuaded with great difficulty to come


The Crimeometer 213
down from New York. Mr. Willoughby he requested
to remain outside until after the tests. She seemed
perfectly calm as she greeted us, and looked with
curiosity at the paraphernalia which Kennedy had
installed in her library. Kennedy, who was putting
some finishing touches on it, was talking in a low
voice to reassure her.
“If you will sit here, please, Mrs. Willoughby, and
place your hands on these two brass domes—there,
that's it. This is just a little arrangement to test
your nervous condition. Dr. Guthrie, who under-
stands it, will take his position outside in the music-
room at that other table. Walter, just switch off
that light, please.
“Mrs. Willoughby, I may say that in testing, say,
the memory, we psychologists have recently developed
two tests, the event test, where something is made to
happen before a person's eyes and later he is asked
to describe it, and the picture test, where a picture
is shown for a certain length of time, after which the
patient is also asked to describe what was in the
picture. I have endeavoured to combine these two
ideas by using the moving-picture machine which you
see here. I am going to show three reels of films.”
As nearly as I could make out Kennedy had turned
on the light in the lantern on his side of the table.
As he worked over the machine, which for the present
served to distract Mrs. Willoughby's attention from
herself, he was asking her a series of questions.
From my position I could see that by the light of
the machine he was recording both the questions and
the answers, as well as the time registered to the
4


The Crimeometer 215
of your wife and perhaps take her for a turn or two
in the fresh air, I think we can tell you in a few mo-
ments whether her condition is in any way serious
or not.”
Mrs. Willoughby was on the verge of hysterics as
her husband supported her out of the room. The
door had scarcely shut before Kennedy threw open
a window and seemed to beckon into the darkness.
As if from nowhere, Donnelly and Bentley sprang up
and were admitted.
Dr. Guthrie had now returned from the music-
room, bearing a sheet of paper on which was traced
a long irregular curve at various points on which
marginal notes had been written hastily.
Kennedy leaped directly into the middle of things
with his characteristic ardour. “You recall,” he be-
gan, “that no one seemed to know just who took the
jewels in both the cases you first reported? “Seeing
is believing,” is an old saying, but in the face of such
reports as you detectives gathered it is in a fair way
to lose its force. And you were not at fault, either,
for modern psychology is proving by experiments that
people do not see even a fraction of the things they
confidently believe they see.
“For example, a friend of mine, a professor in a
Western university, has carried on experiments with
scores of people and has not found one who could
give a completely accurate description of what he
had seen, even in the direct testimony; while under
the influence of questions, particularly if they were
at all leading, witnesses all showed extensive inac-
curacies in one or more particulars, and that even


The Crimeometer 217
ratus directed by wireless. The motion camera as a
detective has now proved its value. I have here three
films taken at Trimble's, from different angles, and
they clearly show exactly what actually occurred
while Mrs. Willoughby and Annie Grayson were
looking at the Kimberley Queen.”
He paused as if analysing the steps in his own
mind. “The telegraphone gave me the first hint of
the truth,” he said. “The motion camera brought me
a step nearer, but without this third instrument, while
I should have been successful, I would not have got
at the whole truth.”
He was fingering the apparatus on the library table
connected with that in the music-room. “This is the
psychometer for testing mental aberrations,” he ex-
plained. “The scientists who are using it to-day are
working, not with a view to aiding criminal juris-
prudence, but with the hope of making such discov-
eries that the mental health of the race may be bet-
tered. Still, I believe that in the study of mental
diseases these men are furnishing the knowledge upon
which future criminologists will build to make the
detection of crime an absolute certainty. Some day
there will be no jury, no detectives, no witnesses, no
attorneys. The state will merely submit all suspects
to tests of scientific instruments like these, and as
these instruments can not make mistakes or tell lies
their evidence will be conclusive of guilt or inno-
CenCe.
“Already the psychometer is an actual working
fact. No living man can conceal his emotions from
the uncanny instrument. He may bring the most gi-


218 The Dream Doctor
gantic of will-powers into play to conceal his inner
feelings and the psychometer will record the very
work which he makes this will-power do.
“The machine is based upon the fact that experi-
ments have proved that the human body's resistance
to an electrical current is increased with the increase
of the emotions. Dr. Jung, of Zurich, thought that
it would be a very simple matter to record these vary-
ing emotions, and the psychometer is the result—
simple and crude to-day compared with what we have
a right to expect in the future. -
“A galvanometer is so arranged that its action
swings a mirror from side to side, reflecting a light.
This light falls on a ground-glass scale marked off
into centimetres, and the arrow is made to follow the
beam of light. A pen pressing down on a metal drum
carrying a long roll of paper revolved by machinery
records the variations. Dr. Guthrie, who had charge
of the recording, simply sat in front of the ground
glass and with the arrow point followed the reflection
of the light as it moved along the scale, in this way
making a record on the paper on the drum, which I see
he is now holding in his hand. -
“Mrs. Willoughby, the subject, and myself, the ex-
aminer, sat here, facing each other over this table.
Through those metal domes on which she was to keep
her hands she received an electric current so weak
that it could not be felt even by the most sensitive
nerves. Now with every increase in her emotion,
either while I was putting questions to her or show-
ing her the pictures, whether she showed it outwardly
or not, she increased her body’s resistance to the cur-
-


The Crimeometer 219
rent that was being passed in through her hands.
The increase was felt by the galvanometer connected
by wires in the music-room, the mirror swung, the
light travelled on the scale, the arrow was moved by
Dr. Guthrie, and her varying emotions were recorded
indelibly upon the revolving sheet of paper, recorded
in such a way as to show their intensity and reveal
to the trained scientist much of the mental condition
of the subject.”
Kennedy and Dr. Guthrie now conversed in low
tones. Once in a while I could catch a scrap of the
conversation—“not an epileptic,” “no abnormal con-
formation of the head,” “certain mental defects,”
“often the result of sickness or accident.”
“Every time that woman appeared there was a
most peculiar disturbance,” remarked Dr. Guthrie as
Kennedy took the roll of paper from him and studied
it carefully.
At length the light seemed to break through his
face.
“Among the various kinds of insanity,” he said,
slowly measuring his words, “there is one that mani-
fests itself as an irresistible impulse to steal. Such
terms as neuropath and kleptomaniac are often re-
garded as rather elegant names for contemptible ex-
cuses invented by medical men to cover up stealing.
People are prone to say cynically, “Poor man's sins;
rich man’s diseases.” Yet kleptomania does exist, and
it is easy to make it seem like crime when it is really
persistent, incorrigible, and irrational stealing.
Often it is so great as to be incurable. Cases have
been recorded of clergymen who were kleptomaniacs


The Crimeometer 221
“But what about Annie Grayson?” persisted Don-
nelly.
“I have taken care of her,” responded Kennedy
laconically. “She is already under arrest. Would
you like to see why?”
A moment later we had all piled into Dr. Guthrie's
car, standing at the door.
At the cosy little Grayson villa we found two large-
eyed detectives and a very angry woman waiting im-
patiently. Heaped up on a table in the living room
was a store of loot that readily accounted for the ocu-
lar peculiarity of the detectives.
The jumble on the table contained a most magnif-
icent collection of diamonds, sapphires, ropes of .
pearls, emeralds, statuettes, and bronze and ivory
antiques, books in rare bindings, and other baubles
which wealth alone can command. It dazzled our
eyes as we made a mental inventory of the heap. Yet
it was a most miscellaneous collection. Beside a
pearl collar with a diamond clasp were a pair of plain
leather slippers and a pair of silk stockings. Things
of value and things of no value were mixed as if by a
lunatic. A beautiful neck ornament of carved coral
lay near a half-dozen common linen handkerchiefs.
A strip of silk hid a valuable collection of antique
jewellery. Besides diamonds and precious stones by
the score were gold and silver ornaments, silks, satins,
laces, draperies, articles of virtu, plumes, even cut-
lery and bric-à-brac. All this must have been the
result of countless excursions to the stores of New
York and innumerable clever thefts.
We could only look at each other in amazement


222 The Dream Doctor
and wonder at the defiance written on the face of An-
nie Grayson.
“In all this strange tangle of events,” remarked
Kennedy, surveying the pile with obvious satisfaction,
“I find that the precise instruments of science have
told me one more thing. Some one else discovered
Mrs. Willoughby's weakness, led her on, suggested op-
portunities to her, used her again and again, profited
by her malady, probably to the extent of thousands
of dollars. My telegraphone record hinted at that.
In some way Annie Grayson secured the confidence
of Mrs. Willoughby. The one took for the sake of
taking; the other received for the sake of money.
Mrs. Willoughby was easily persuaded by her new
friend to leave here what she had stolen. Besides,
having taken it, she had no further interest in it.
“The rule of law is that every one is responsible
who knows the nature and consequences of his act.
We have absolute proof that you, Annie Grayson, al-
though you did not actually commit any of the thefts
yourself, led Mrs. Willoughby on and profited by her.
Dr. Guthrie will take care of the case of Mrs. Wil-
loughby. But the law must deal with you for play-
ing on the insanity of a kleptomaniac-the cleverest
scheme yet of the queen of shoplifters.”
As Kennedy turned nonchalantly from the detect-
ives who had seized Annie Grayson, he drew a little
red folder from his pocket.
“You see, Walter,” he smiled, “how soon one gets
into a habit? I’m almost a regular commuter, now.
You know, they are always bringing out these little
red folders just when things grow interesting.”


The Crimeometer 228
I glanced over his shoulder. He was studying the
local timetable.
“We can get the last train from Glenclair if we
hurry,” he announced, stuffing the folder back into
his pocket. “They will take her to Newark by trol-
ley, I suppose. Come on.”
We made our hasty adieux and escaped as best we,
could the shower of congratulations. ‘. . .
“Now" for a rest,” he said, settling back into the
plush covered seat for the long ride into town, his hat
down over his eyes and his legs hunched up against
the back of the next seat. Across in the tube and
uptown in a nighthawk cab we went and at last we
were home for a good sleep.
“This promises to be an off-day,” Craig remarked,
the next morning over the breakfast table. “Meet
me in the forenoon and we’ll take a long, swinging
walk. I feel the need of physical exercise.” -
“A mark of returning sanity!” I exclaimed.
I had become so used to being called out on the un-
expected, now, that I almost felt that some one might
stop us on our tramp. Nothing of the sort happened,
however, until our return.
Then a middle-aged man and a young girl, heavily
veiled, were waiting for Kennedy, as we turned in
from the brisk finish in the cutting river wind along
the Drive. -
“Winslow is my name, sir,” the man began, rising
nervously as we entered the room, “and this is my
only daughter, Ruth.”
Kennedy bowed and we waited for the man to pro-
ceed. He drew his hand over his forehead which was


224 The Dream Doctor
moist with perspiration in spite of the season. Ruth
Winslow was an attractive young woman, I could
see at a glance, although her face was almost com-
pletely hidden by the thick veil.
“Perhaps, Ruth, I had better—ah—see these gen-
tlemen alone?” suggested her father gently.
“No, father,” she answered in a tone of forced
bravery, “I think not. I can stand it. I must stand
it. Perhaps I can help you in telling about the the
case.”
Mr. Winslow cleared his throat.
“We are from Goodyear, a little mill-town,” he pro-
ceeded slowly, “and as you doubtless can see we have
just arrived after travelling all day.”
“Goodyear,” repeated Kennedy slowly as the man
paused. “The chief industry, of course, is rubber,
I suppose.”
“Yes,” assented Mr. Winslow, “the town centres
about rubber. Our factories are not the largest but
are very large, nevertheless, and are all that keep the
town going. It is on rubber, also, I fear, that the
tragedy which I am about to relate hangs. I sup-
pose the New York papers have had nothing to say
of the strange death of Bradley Cushing, a young
chemist in Goodyear who was formerly employed by
the mills but had lately set up a little laboratory of
his OWI. 27°
Kennedy turned to me. “Nothing unless the late
editions of the evening papers have it,” I replied.
“Perhaps it is just as well,” continued Mr. Wins.
low. “They wouldn’t have it straight. In fact, no
one has it straight yet. That is why we have come to


The Crimeometer 225
you. You see, to my way of thinking Bradley Cush-
ing was on the road to changing the name of the town
from Goodyear to Cushing. He was not the inventor
of synthetic rubber about which you hear nowadays,
but he had improved the process so much that there is
no doubt that synthetic rubber would soon have been
on the market cheaper and better than the best nat-
ural rubber from Para.
“Goodyear is not a large place, but it is famous for
its rubber and uses a great deal of raw material.
We have sent out some of the best men in the business,
seeking new sources in South America, in Mexico, in
Ceylon, Malaysia and the Congo. What our people
do not know about rubber is hardly worth knowing,
from the crude gum to the thousands of forms of fin-
ished products. Goodyear is a wealthy little town,
too, for its size. Naturally all its investments are in
rubber, not only in our own mills but in companies
all over the world. Last year several of our leading
citizens became interested in a new concession in the
Congo granted to a group of American capitalists,
among whom was Lewis Borland, who is easily the
local magnate of our town. When this group organ-
ised an expedition to explore the region preparatory
to taking up the concession, several of the best known
people in Goodyear accompanied the party and later
subscribed for large blocks of stock.
“I say all this so that you will understand at the
start just what part rubber plays in the life of our
little community. You can readily see that such be-
ing the case, whatever advantage the world at large
might gain from cheap synthetic rubber would


226 The Dream Doctor
scarcely benefit those whose money and labour had
been expended on the assumption that rubber would
be scarce and dear. Naturally, then, Bradley Cush-
ing was not precisely popular with a certain set in
Goodyear. As for myself, I am frank to admit that
I might have shared the opinion of many others re-
garding him, for I have a small investment in this
Congo enterprise myself. But the fact is that Cush-
ing, when he came to our town fresh from his college
fellowship in industrial chemistry, met my daughter.”
Without taking his eyes off Kennedy, he reached
over and patted the gloved hand that clutched the
arm of the chair alongside his own. “They were en-
gaged and often they used to talk over what they
would do when Bradley’s invention of a new way to
polymerise isoprene, as the process is called, had
solved the rubber question and had made him rich.
I firmly believe that their dreams were not day
dreams, either. The thing was done. I have seen
his products and I know something about rubber.
There were no impurities in his rubber.”
Mr. Winslow paused. Ruth was sobbing quietly.
“This morning,” he resumed hastily, “Bradley
Cushing was found dead in his laboratory under the
most peculiar circumstances. I do not know whether
his secret died with him or whether some one has
stolen it. From the indications I concluded that he
had been murdered.”
Such was the case as Kennedy and I heard it then.
Ruth looked up at him with tearful eyes wistful
with pain, “Would Mr. Kennedy work on it?” There
was only one answer.


XV
The Vampire
S we sped out to the little mill-town on the
last train, after, Kennedy had insisted on tak-
ing us all to a quiet little restaurant, he placed us
so that Miss Winslow was furthest from him and her
father nearest. I could hear now and then scraps
of their conversation as he resumed his questioning,
and knew that Mr. Winslow was proving to be a good
Observer.
“Cushing used to hire a young fellow of some sci-
entific experience, named Strong,” said Mr. Winslow
as he endeavoured to piece the facts together as log-
ically as it was possible to do. “Strong used to open
his laboratory for him in the morning, clean up the
dirty apparatus, and often assist him in some of his
experiments. This morning when Strong ap-
proached the laboratory at the usual time he was sur-
prised to see that though it was broad daylight there
was a light burning. He was alarmed and before
going in looked through the window. The sight that
he saw froze him. There lay Cushing on a workbench
and beside him and around him pools of coagulating
blood. The door was not locked, as we found after-
ward, but the young man did not stop to enter. He
ran to me and, fortunately, I met him at our door. I
went back.
227


228 The Dream Doctor
“We opened the unlocked door. The first thing,
as I recall it, that greeted me was an unmistakable
odour of oranges. It was a very penetrating and
very peculiar odour. I didn’t understand it, for
there seemed to be something else in it besides the
orange smell. However, I soon found out what it
was, or at least Strong did. I don’t know whether
you know anything about it, but it seems that when
you melt real rubber in the effort to reduce it to car-
bon and hydrogen, you get a liquid substance which
is known as isoprene. Well, isoprene, according to
Strong, gives out an odour something like ether.
Cushing, or some one else, had apparently been heat-
ing isoprene. As soon as Strong mentioned the smell
of ether I recognised that that was what made the
smell of oranges so peculiar.
“However, that's not the point. There lay Cushing
on his back on the workbench, just as Strong had said.
I bent over him, and in his arm, which was bare, I
saw a little gash made by some sharp instrument and
iaying bare an artery, I think, which was cut. Long
spurts of blood covered the floor for some distance
around and from the veins in his arm, which had also
been severed, a long stream of blood led to a hollow
in the cement floor where it had collected. I believe
that he bled to death.”
“And the motive for such a terrible crime?” quer-
ied Craig.
Mr. Winslow shook his head helplessly. “I sup-
pose there are plenty of motives,” he answered slowly,
“as many motives as there are big investments in rub-
ber-producing ventures in Goodyear.”


The Vampire 229
“But have you any idea who would go so far to pro-
tect his investments as to kill?” persisted Kennedy.
Mr. Winslow made no reply. “Who,” asked Ken-
nedy, “was chiefly interested in the rubber works
where Cushing was formerly employed?”
“The president of the company is the Mr. Borland
whom I mentioned,” replied Mr. Winslow. “He is
a man of about forty, I should say, and is reputed to
own a majority of the ”
“Oh, father,” interrupted Miss Winslow, who had
caught the drift of the conversation in spite of the
pains that had been taken to keep it away from her,
“Mr. Borland would never dream of such a thing.
It is wrong even to think of it.”
“I didn’t say that he would, my dear,” corrected
Mr. Winslow gently. “Professor Kennedy asked me
who was chiefly interested in the rubber works and
Mr. Borland owns a majority of the stock.” He
leaned over and whispered to Kennedy, “Borland is
a visitor at our home, and between you and me, he
thinks a great deal of Ruth.”
I looked quickly at Kennedy, but he was absorbed
in looking out of the car window at the landscape
which he did not and could not see.
“You said there were others who had an interest
in outside companies,” cross-questioned Kennedy.
“I take it that you mean companies dealing in crude
rubber, the raw material, people with investments in
plantations and concessions, perhaps. Who are
they? Who were the men who went on that expedi-
tion to the Congo with Borland which you men-
tioned?”


230 The Dream Doctor
“Of course, there was Borland himself,” answered
Winslow. “Then there was a young chemist named
Lathrop, a very clever and ambitious fellow who suc-
ceeded Cushing when he resigned from the works,
and Dr. Harris, who was persuaded to go because of
his friendship for Borland. After they took up the
concession I believe all of them put money into it,
though how much I can’t say.”
I was curious to ask whether there were any other
visitors at the Winslow house who might be rivals
for Ruth's affections, but there was no opportu-
nity.
Nothing more was said until we arrived at Good-
year.
We found the body of Cushing lying in a modest
little mortuary chapel of an undertaking establish-
ment on the main street. Kennedy at once began
his investigation by discovering what seemed to have
escaped others. About the throat were light discol-
ourations that showed that the young inventor had
been choked by a man with a powerful grasp, al-
though the fact that the marks had escaped observa-
tion led quite obviously to the conclusion that he had
not met his death in that way, and that the marks
probably played only a minor part in the tragedy.
Kennedy passed over the doubtful evidence of
strangulation for the more profitable examination
of the little gash in the wrist.
“The radial artery has been cut,” he mused.
A low exclamation from him brought us all bend-
ing over him as he stooped and examined the cold


The Vampire 231
form. He was holding in the palm of his hand a lit-
tle piece of something that shone like silver. It was
in the form of a minute hollow cylinder with two
grooves on it, a cylinder so tiny that it would scarcely
have slipped over the point of a pencil.
“Where did you find it?” I asked eagerly.
He pointed to the wound. “Sticking in the sev-
ered end of a piece of vein,” he replied, half to him-
self, “cuffed over the end of the radial artery which
had been severed, and done so neatly as to be prac-
tically hidden. It was done so cleverly that the inner
linings of the vein and artery, the endothelium as it
is called, were in complete contact with each other.”
As I looked at the little silver thing and at Ken-
nedy's face, which betrayed nothing, I felt that here
indeed was a mystery. What new scientific engine of
death was that little hollow cylinder?
“Next I should like to visit the laboratory,” he re-
marked simply.
Fortunately, the laboratory had been shut and
nothing had been disturbed except by the undertaker
and his men who had carried the body away. Strong
had left word that he had gone to Boston, where, in
a safe deposit box, was a sealed envelope in which
Cushing kept a copy of the combination of his safe,
which had died with him. There was, therefore, no
hope of seeing the assistant until the morning.
Rennedy found plenty to occupy his time in his
minute investigation of the laboratory. There, for
instance, was the pool of blood leading back by a thin
dark stream to the workbench and its terrible figure,


232 The Dream Doctor
which I could almost picture to myself lying there
through the silent hours of the night before, with its
life blood slowly oozing away, unconscious, powerless
to save itself. There were spurts of arterial blood
on the floor and on the nearby laboratory furniture,
and beside the workbench another smaller and iso-
lated pool of blood.
On a table in a corner by the window stood a mi-
croscope which Cushing evidently used, and near it a
box of fresh sterilised slides. Kennedy, who had
been casting his eye carefully about taking in the
whole laboratory, seemed delighted to find the slides.
He opened the box and gingerly took out some of the
little oblong pieces of glass, on each of which he
dropped a couple of minute drops of blood from the
arterial spurts and the venous pools on the floor.
Near the workbench were circular marks, much as
if some jars had been set down there. We were
watching him, almost in awe at the matter of fact
manner in which he was proceeding in what to us
was nothing but a hopeless enigma, when I saw him
stoop and pick up a few little broken pieces of glass.
There seemed to be blood spots on the glass, as on
other things, but particularly interesting to him.
A moment later I saw that he was holding in his
hand what were apparently the remains of a little
broken vial which he had fitted together from the
pieces. Evidently it had been used and dropped in
haste.
“A vial for a local anesthetic,” he remarked. “This
is the sort of thing that might be injected into an arm
or leg and deaden the pain of a cut, but that is all.


The Vampire 233
It wouldn’t affect the consciousness or prevent any
one from resisting a murderer to the last. I doubt
if that had anything directly to do with his death,
or perhaps even that this is Cushing's blood on it.”
Unlike Winslow I had seen Kennedy in action so
many times that I knew it was useless to speculate.
But I was fascinated, for the deeper we got into the
case, the more unusual and inexplicable it seemed.
I gave that end of it up, but the fact that Strong had
gone to secure the combination of the safe suggested
to me to examine that article. There was certainly
no evidence of robbery or even of an attempt at rob-
bery there.
“Was any doctor called?” asked Kennedy.
“Yes,” he replied. “Though I knew it was of no
use I called in Dr. Howe, who lives up the street from
the laboratory. I should have called Dr. Harris,
who used to be my own physician, but since his re-
turn from Africa with the Borland expedition, he has
not been in very good health and has practically
given up his practice. Dr. Howe is the best prac-
tising physician in town, I think.”
“We shall call on him to-morrow,” said Craig,
snapping his watch, which already marked far after
midnight.
Dr. Howe proved, the next day, to be an athletic-
looking man, and I could not help noticing and ad-
miring his powerful frame and his hearty handshake,
as he greeted us when we dropped into his office with
a card from Winslow.
The doctor's theory was that Cushing had commit-
ted suicide.


234 The Dream Doctor
“But why should a young man who had invented
a new method of polymerising isoprene, who was go-
ing to become wealthy, and was engaged to a beauti-
ful young girl, commit suicide?”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. It was evident
that he, too, belonged to the “natural rubber set”
which dominated Goodyear.
“I haven’t looked into the case very deeply, but I'm
not so sure that he had the secret, are you?”
Kennedy smiled. “That is what I’d like to know.
I suppose that an expert like Mr. Borland could tell
me, perhaps?”
“I should think so.”
“Where is his office?” asked Craig. “Could you
point it out to me from the window?”
Kennedy was standing by one of the windows of
the doctor's office, and as he spoke he turned and drew
a little field glass from his pocket. “Which end of
the rubber Works is it?”
Dr. Howe tried to direct him but Kennedy ap-
peared unwarrantably obtuse, requiring the doctor
to raise the window, and it was some moments before
he got his glasses on the right spot.
Kennedy and I thanked the doctor for his courtesy
and left the office.
We went at once to the office of Dr. Harris, to
whom Winslow, had also given us cards. We found
him an anaemic man, half asleep. Kennedy tenta-
tively suggested the murder of Cushing.
“Well, if you ask me my opinion,” snapped out the
doctor, “although I wasn’t called into the case, from
what I hear, I’d say that he was murdered.”


The Vampire 235
“Some seem to think it was suicide,” prompted
Rennedy.
“People who have brilliant prospects and are en-
gaged to pretty girls don’t usually die of their own
accord,” rasped Harris.
“So you think he really did have the secret of arti-
ficial rubber?” asked Craig.
“Not artificial rubber. Synthetic rubber. It was
the real thing, I believe.”
“Did Mr. Borland and his new chemist Lathrop
believe it, too?”
“I can’t say. But I should surely advise you to see
them.” The doctor's face was twitching nervously.
“Where is Borland's office?” repeated Kennedy,
again taking from his pocket the field glass and ad-
justing it carefully by the window.
“Over there,” directed Harris, indicating the cor-
ner of the works to which we had already been di-
rected. -
Rennedy had stepped closer to the window before
him and I stood beside him looking out also.
“The cut was a very peculiar one,” remarked Ken-
nedy, still adjusting the glasses. “An artery and a
vein had been placed together so that the endothelium,
or inner lining of each, was in contact with the other,
giving a continuous serous surface. Which window
did you say was Borland's? I wish you'd step to the
other window and raise it, so that I can be sure. I
don’t want to go wandering all over the works look-
ing for him.”
“Yes,” the doctor said as he went, leaving him
standing beside the window from which he had been


236 The Dream Doctor
directing us, “yes, you surely should see Mr. Borland.
And don’t forget that young chemist of his, Lathrop,
either. If I can be of any more help to you, come
back again.”
It was a long walk through the village and factory
yards to the office of Lewis Borland, but we were
amply repaid by finding him in and ready to see us.
Borland was a typical Yankee, tall, thin, evidently
predisposed to indigestion, a man of tremendous men-
tal and nervous energy and with a hidden wiry
strength.
“Mr. Borland,” introduced Kennedy, changing his
tactics and adopting a new rôle, “I’ve come down to
you as an authority on rubber to ask you what your
opinion is regarding the invention of a townsman of
yours named Cushing.”
“Cushing?” repeated Borland in some surprise.
“Why—”
“Yes,” interrupted Kennedy, “I understand all
about it. I had heard of his invention in New York
and would have put some money into it if I could have
been convinced. I was to see him to-day, but of
course, as you were going to say, his death prevents
it. Still, I should like to know what you think about
it.”
“Well,” Borland added, jerking out his words
nervously, as seemed to be his habit, “Cushing was a
bright young fellow. He used to work for me until
he began to know too much about the rubber busi-
*Aess.”
“Do you know anything about his scheme?” insin-
uated Kennedy.


The Vampire 23/
“Very little, except that it was not patented yet, I
believe, though he told every one that the patent was
applied for and he expected to get a basic patent in
some way without any interference.”
“Well,” drawled Kennedy, affecting as nearly as
possible the air of a promoter, “if I could get his as-
sistant, or some one who had authority to be present,
would you, as a practical rubber man, go over to his
laboratory with me? I’d join you in making an offer
to his estate for the rights to the process, if it seemed
any good.”
“You’re a cool one,” ejaculated Borland, with a
peculiar avaricious twinkle in the corners of his eyes.
“His body is scarcely cold and yet you come around
proposing to buy out his invention and—and, of all
persons, you come to me.”
“To you?” inquired Kennedy blandly.
“Yes, to me. Don't you know that synthetic rub-
ber would ruin the business system that I have built
up here?” -
Still Craig persisted and argued.
“Young man,” said Borland rising at length as if
an idea had struck him, “I like your nerve. Yes, I
will go. I’ll show you that I don’t fear any compe-
tition from rubber made out of fusel oil or any other
old kind of oil.” He rang a bell and a boy answered.
“Call Lathrop,” he ordered.
The young chemist, Lathrop, proved to be a bright
and active man of the new school, though a good deal
of a rubber stamp. Whenever it was compatible
with science and art, he readily assented to every
proposition that his employer laid down.


238 The Dream Doctor
Kennedy had already telephoned to the Winslows
and Miss Winslow had answered that Strong had re-
turned from Boston. After a little parleying, the sec-
ond visit to the laboratory was arranged and Miss
Winslow was allowed to be present with her father,
after Kennedy had been assured by Strong that the
gruesome relics of the tragedy would be cleared away.
It was in the forenoon that we arrived with Bor-
land and Lathrop. I could not help noticing the cor-
dial manner with which Borland greeted Miss
Winslow. There was something obtrusive even in
his sympathy. Strong, whom we met now for the
first time, seemed rather suspicious of the presence
of Borland and his chemist, but made an effort to talk
freely without telling too much.
“Of course you know,” commenced Strong after
proper urging, “that it has long been the desire of
chemists to synthesise rubber by a method that will
make possible its cheap production on a large scale.
In a general way I know what Mr. Cushing had done,
but there are parts of the process which are covered
in the patents applied for, of which I am not at liberty
to speak yet.”
“Where are the papers in the case, the documents
showing the application for the patent, for instance?”
asked Kennedy. -
“In the safe, sir,” replied Strong.
Strong set to work on the combination which he
Thad obtained from the safe deposit vault. I could
see that Borland and Miss Winslow were talking in a
low tone.
“Are you sure that it is a fact?” I overheard him


240 The Dream Doctor
Back again in New York, Craig took a cab directly
for his laboratory, leaving me marooned with instruc-
tions not to bother him for several hours. I em-
ployed the time in a little sleuthing on my own ac-
count, endeavouring to look up the records of those
involved in the case. I did not discover much, ex-
cept an interview that had been given at the time of
the return of his expedition by Borland to the Star, in
which he gave a graphic description of the dangers
from disease that they had encountered.
I mention it because, though it did not impress me
much when I read it, it at once leaped into my mind
when the interminable hours were over and I rejoined
Kennedy. He was bending over a, new microscope.
“This is a rubber age, Walter,” he began, “and the
stories of men who have been interested in rubber
often sound like fiction.”
He slipped a slide under the microscope, looked at
it and then motioned to me to do the same. “Here is
a very peculiar culture which I have found in some
of that blood,” he commented. “The germs are much
larger than bacteria and they can be seen with a com-
paratively low power microscope swiftly darting be-
tween the blood cells, brushing them aside, but not
penetrating them as some parasites, like that of ma-
laria, do. Besides, spectroscope tests show the pres-
ence of a rather well-known chemical in that blood.”
“A poisoning, then?” I ventured. “Perhaps he
suffered from the disease that many rubber workers
get from the bisulphide of carbon. He must have
done a good deal of vulcanising of his own rubber,
you know.” -


The Vampire 241
“No,” smiled Craig enigmatically, “it wasn’t that.
It was an arsenic derivative. Here's another thing.
You remember the field glass I used?”
He had picked it up from the table and was point-
ing at a little hole in the side, that had escaped my
notice before. “This is what you might call a right-
angled camera. I point the glass out of the window
and while you think I am looking through it I am
really focusing it on you and taking your picture
standing there beside me and out of my apparent line
of vision. It would deceive the most wary.” -
Just then a long-distance call from Winslow told
us that Borland had been to call on Miss Ruth and,
in as kindly a way as could be, had offered her half a
million dollars for her rights in the new patent. At
once it flashed over me that he was trying to get con-
trol of and suppress the invention in the interests of
his own company, a thing that has been done hun-
dreds of times. Or could it all have been part of a
conspiracy? And if it was his conspiracy, would he
succeed in tempting his friend, Miss Winslow, to fall
in with this glittering offer?
Kennedy evidently thought, also, that the time for
action had come, for without a word he set to work
packing his apparatus and we were again headed for
Goodyear.


XVI
The Blood Test
E arrived late at night, or rather in the morn-
ing, but in spite of the late hour Kennedy
was up early urging me to help him carry the stuff
over to Cushing's laboratory. By the middle of the
morning he was ready and had me scouring about
town collecting his audience, which consisted of the
Winslows, Borland and Lathrop, Dr. Howe, Dr. Har-
ris, Strong and myself. The laboratory was dark-
ened and Kennedy took his place beside an electric
moving picture apparatus.
The first picture was different from anything any
of us had ever seen on a screen before. It seemed to
be a mass of little dancing globules. “This,” ex-
plained Kennedy, “is what you would call an educa-
tional moving picture, I suppose. It shows normal
blood corpuscles as they are in motion in the blood of
a healthy man. Those little round cells are the red
corpuscles and the larger irregular cells are the white
corpuscles.”
He stopped the film. The next picture was a sort
of enlarged and elongated house fly, apparently, of
sombre grey color, with a narrow body, thick pro-
boscis and wings that overlapped like the blades of a
pair of shears.
“This,” he went on, “is a picture of the now well-
242


The Blood Test 243
known tse-tse fly found over a large area of Africa.
It has a bite something like a horse-fly and is a per-
fect blood-sucker. Vast territories of thickly popuz
lated, fertile country near the shores of lakes and
rivers are now depopulated as a result of the death-
dealing bite of these flies, more deadly than the blood-
sucking, vampirish ghosts with which, in the middle
ages, people supposed night air to be inhabited. For
this fly carries with it germs which it leaves in the
blood of its victims, which I shall show next.”
A new film started.
“Here is a picture of some blood so infected. No-
tice that worm-like sheath of undulating membrane
terminating in a slender whip-like process by which
it moves about. That thing wriggling about like a
minute electric eel, always in motion, is known as
the trypanosome.
“Isn’t this a marvellous picture? To see the mi-
cro-organism move, evolve and revolve in the midst of
normal cells, uncoil and undulate in the fluids which
they inhabit, to see them play hide and seek with the
blood corpuscles and clumps of fibrin, turn, twist,
and rotate as if in a cage, to see these deadly little
trypanosomes moving back and forth in every direc-
tion displaying their delicate undulating membranes
and showing aside the blood cells that are in their
way while by their side the leucocytes, or white cor-
puscles, lazily extend or retract their pseudopods of
protoplasm. To see all this as it is shown before us
here is to realise that we are in the presence of an un-
known world, a world infinitesimally small, but as
real and as complex as that about us. With the cin-


244 The Dream Doctor
ematograph and the ultra-microscope we can see what
no other forms of photography can reproduce.
“I have secured these pictures so that I can better
mass up the evidence against a certain person in this
room. For in the blood of one of you is now going on
the fight which you have here seen portrayed by the
picture machine. Notice how the blood corpuscles
in this infected blood have lost their smooth, glossy
appearance, become granular and incapable of nour-
ishing the tissues. The trypanosomes are fighting
with the normal blood cells. Here we have the low-
est group of animal life, the protozoa, at work killing
the highest, man.”
Kennedy needed nothing more than the breathless
stillness to convince him of the effectiveness of his
method of presenting his case.
“Now,” he resumed, “let us leave this blood-suck-
ing, vampirish tse-tse fly for the moment. I have
another revelation to make.”
He laid down on the table under the lights, which
now flashed up again, the little hollow silver cylinder.
“This little instrument,” Kennedy explained,
“which I have here is known as a canula, a little ca-
nal, for leading off blood from the veins of one per-
son to another—in other words, blood transfusion.
Modern doctors are proving themselves quite success-
ful in its use.
“Of course, like everything, it has its own peculiar
dangers. But the one point I wish to make is this:
In the selection of a donor for transfusion, people fall
into definite groups. Tests of blood must be made
first to see whether it “agglutinates,’ and in this re-


The Blood Test 245
spect there are four classes of persons. In our case
this matter had to be neglected. For, gentlemen,
there were two kinds of blood on that laboratory
floor, and they do not agglutinate. This, in short,
was what actually happened. An attempt was made
to transfuse Cushing's blood as donor to another
person as recipient. A man suffering from the dis-
ease caught from the bite of the tse-tse fly—the
deadly sleeping sickness so well known in Africa
—has deliberately tried a form of robbery which I be-
lieve to be without parallel. He has stolen the blood
of another!
“He stole it in a desperate attempt to stay an in-
curable disease. This man had used an arsenic com-
pound called atoxyl, till his blood was filled with it
and its effects on the trypanosomes nil. There was
but one wild experiment more to try—the stolen
blood of another.”
Craig paused to let the horror of the crime sink
into our minds.
“Some one in the party which went to look over the
concession in the Congo contracted the sleeping sick-
ness from the bites of those blood-sucking flies. That
person bas now reached the stage of insanity, and his
blood is full of the germs and overloaded with atoxyl.
“Everything had been tried and had failed. He
was doomed. He saw his fortune menaced by the
discovery of the way to make synthetic rubber. Life
and money were at stake. One night, nerved up by
a fit of insane fury, with a power far beyond what one
would expect in his ordinary weakened condition, he
saw a light in Cushing's laboratory. He stole in


246 The Dream Doctor
stealthily. He seized the inventor with his momen-
tarily superhuman strength and choked him. As
they struggled he must have shoved a sponge soaked
with ether and orange essence under his nose. Cush-
ing went under.
“Resistance overcome by the anesthetic, he dragged
the now insensible form to the work bench. Fran-
tically he must have worked. He made an incision
and exposed the radial artery, the pulse. Then he
must have administered a local anesthetic to himself
in his arm or leg. He secured a vein and pushed the
cut end over this little canula. Then he fitted the
artery of Cushing over that and the blood that was,
perhaps, to save his life began flowing into his de-
pleted veins.
“Who was this madman? I have watched the ac-
tions of those whom I suspected when they did not
know they were being watched. I did it by using
this neat little device which looks like a field glass,
but is really a camera that takes pictures of things
at right angles to the direction in which the glass
seems to be pointed. One person, I found, had a
wound on his leg, the wrapping of which he adjusted
nervously when he thought no one was looking. He
had difficulty in limping even a short distance to open
a Window.”
Kennedy uncorked a bottle and the subtle odor of
oranges mingled with ether stole through the room.
“Some one here will recognize that odour immedi-
ately. It is the new orange-essence vapour anes.
thetic, a mixture of essence of orange with ether and
chloroform. The odour hidden by the orange which


The Blood Test 247
lingered in the laboratory, Mr. Winslow and Mr.
Strong, was not isoprene, but really ether.
“I am letting some of the odour escape here be-
cause in this very laboratory it was that the thing.
took place, and it is one of the well-known principles
of psychology that odours are powerfully suggestive.
In this case the odour now must suggest the terrible
scene of the other night to some one before me. More
than that, I have to tell that person that the blood
transfusion did not and could not save him. His ill-
ness is due to a condition that is incurable and can-
not be altered by transfusion of new blood. That
person is just as doomed to-day as he was before he
committed—”
A figure was groping blindly about. The arsenic
compounds with which his blood was surcharged had
brought on one of the attacks of blindness to which
users of the drug are subject. In his insane frenzy
he was evidently reaching desperately for Kennedy
Thimself. As he groped he limped painfully from the
soreness of his wound.
“Dr. Harris,” accused Kennedy, avoiding the mad
rush at himself, and speaking in a tone that thrilled
us, “you are the man who sucked the blood of Cush-
ing into your own veins and left him to die. But the
state will never be able to exact from you the penalty
of your crime. Nature will do that too soon for jus-
tice. Gentlemen, this is the murderer of Bradley
Cushing, a maniac, a modern scientific vampire.”
I regarded the broken, doomed man with mingled
pity and loathing, rather than with the usual feelings
one has toward a criminal.


The Blood Test 249
gone far enough with Kennedy to realise that on this
assignment there was no such thing as rest.
“District Attorney Carton wants to see me imme-
diately at the Criminal Courts Building, Walter,”
announced Kennedy, early the following morning.
Clothed, and as much in my right mind as possible
after the arduous literary labours of the night before,
I needed no urging, for Carton was an old friend of
all the newspaper men. I joined Craig quickly in a
hasty ride down-town in the rush hour.
On the table before the square-jawed, close-cropped,
fighting prosecutor, whom I knew already after many
a long and hard-fought campaign both before and
after election, lay a little package which had evidently
come to him in the morning's mail by parcel-post.
“What do you suppose is in that, Kennedy?” he
asked, tapping it gingerly. “I haven’t opened it yet,
but I think it's a bomb. Wait—I’ll have a pail of
water sent in here so that you can open it, if you
will. You understand such things.”
“No-no,” hastened Kennedy, “that's exactly the
wrong thing to do. Some of these modern chemical
bombs are set off in precisely that way. No. Let
me dissect the thing carefully. I think you may be
right. It does look as if it might be an infernal ma-
chine. You see the evident disguise of the roughly
written address?”
Carton nodded, for it was that that had excited his
suspicion in the first place. Meanwhile, Kennedy,
without further ceremony, began carefully to remove
the wrapper of brown Manila paper, preserving every-
thing as he did so. Carton and I instinctively backed


250 The Dream Doctor
away. Inside, Craig had disclosed an oblong wooden
box.
“I realise that opening a bomb is dangerous busi-
ness,” he pursued slowly, engrossed in his work and
almost oblivious to us, “but I think I can take a
chance safely with this fellow. The dangerous part
is what might be called drawing the fangs. No
bombs are exactly safe toys to have around until they
are wholly destroyed, and before you can say you
have destroyed one, it is rather a ticklish business to
take out the dangerous element.”
He had removed the cover in the deftest manner
without friction, and seemingly without disturbing
the contents in the least. I do not pretend to know
how he did it; but the proof was that we could see him
still working from our end of the room.
On the inside of the cover was roughly drawn a
skull and cross-bones, showing that the miscreant
who sent the thing had at least a sort of grim humour.
For, where the teeth should have been in the skull
were innumerable match-heads. Kennedy picked
them out with as much sang-froid as if he were not
playing jackstraws with life and death.
Then he removed the explosive itself and the vari-
ous murderous slugs and bits of metal embedded in
it, carefully separating each as if to be labelled “Ex-
hibit A,” “B,” and so on for a class in bomb dissec-
tion. Finally, he studied the sides and bottom of the
box.
“Evidence of chlorate-of-potash mixture,” Ken-
nedy muttered to himself, still examining the bomb.


XVII
The Bomb Maker
E stared at each other in blank awe, at the va-
rious parts, so innocent looking in the heaps
on the table, now safely separated, but together a
combination ticket to perdition.
“Who do you suppose could have sent it?” I blurted
out when I found my voice, then, suddenly recollect-
ing the political and legal fight that Carton was en-
gaged in at the time, I added, “The white slavers?”
“Not a doubt,” he returned laconically. “And,”
he exclaimed, bringing down both hands vigorously
in characteristic emphasis on the arms of his office
chair, “I’ve got to win this fight against the vice trust,
as I call it, or the whole work of the district attor-
ney's office in clearing up the city will be discredited
—to say nothing of the risk the present incumbent
runs at having such grateful friends about the city
send marks of their affection and esteem like this.”
I knew something already of the situation, and
Carton continued thoughtfully: “All the powers of
vice are fighting a last-ditch battle against me now.
I think I am on the trail of the man or men higher up
in this commercialised-vice business—and it is a busi-
ness, big business, too. You know, I suppose, that
they seem to have a string of hotels in the city, of the
worst character. There is nothing that they will
252


The Bomb Maker 253
stop at to protect themselves. Why, they are using
gangs of thugs to terrorise any one who informs on
them. The gunmen, of course, hate a snitch worse
than poison. There have been bomb outrages, too—
nearly a bomb a day lately—against some of those
who look shaky and seem to be likely to do business
with my office. But I’m getting closer all the time.”
“How do you mean?” asked Kennedy.
“Well, one of the best witnesses, if I can break him
down by pressure and promises, ought to be a man
named Haddon, who is running a place in the Fifties,
known as the Mayfair. Haddon knows all these
people. I can get him in half an hour if you think
it worth while—not here, but somewhere uptown, say
at the Prince Henry.”
Kennedy nodded. We had heard of Haddon be-
fore, a notorious character in the white-light district.
A moment later Carton had telephoned to the May-
fair and had found Haddon.
“How did you get him so that he is even consid-
ering turning state's evidence?” asked Craig.
“Well,” answered Carton slowly, “I suppose it was
partly through a cabaret singer and dancer, Loraine
Keith, at the Mayfair. You know you never get the
truth about things in the underworld except in pieces.
As much as any one, I think we have been able to
use her to weave a web about him. Besides, she seems
to think that Haddon has treated her shamefully.
According to her story, he seems to have been lavish-
ing everything on her, but lately, for some reason, has
deserted her. Still, even in her jealousy she does not
accuse any other woman of winning him away.”


254 The Dream Doctor
“Perhaps it is the opposite—another man winning
her,” suggested Craig dryly.
“It’s a peculiar situation,” shrugged Carton.
“There is another man. As nearly as I can make out
there is a fellow named Brodie who does a dance with
Ther. But he seems to annoy her, yet at the same time
exercises a sort of fascination over her.”
“Then she is dancing at the Mayfair yet?” hastily
asked Craig.
“Yes. I told her to stay, not to excite suspicion.”
“And Haddon knows?”
“Oh, no. But she has told us enough about him
already so that we can worry him, apparently, just
as what he can tell us would worry the others inter-
ested in the hotels. To tell the truth, I think she is
a drug fiend. Why, my men tell me that they have
seen her take just a sniff of something and change in-
stantly—become a willing tool.”
“That's the way it happens,” commented Kennedy.
“Now, I’ll go up there and meet Haddon,” resumed
Carton. “After I have been with him long enough
to get into his confidence, suppose you two just hap-
pen along.”
Half an hour later Kennedy and I sauntered into
the Prince Henry, where Carton had made the ap-
pointment in order to avoid suspicion that might
arise if he were seen with Haddon at the Mayfair.
The two men were waiting for us—Haddon, by
contrast with Carton, a weak-faced, nervous man, with
bulgy eyes.
“Mr. Haddon,” introduced Carton, “let me present
a couple of reporters from the Star—off duty, so that


The Bomb Maker 255
we can talk freely before them, I can assure you.
Good fellows, too, Haddon.”
The hotel and cabaret keeper smiled a sickly smile
and greeted us with a covert, questioning glance.
“This attack on Mr. Carton has unnerved me,” he
shivered. “If any one dares to do that to him, what
will they do to me?”
“Don’t get cold feet, Haddon,” urged Carton.
“You’ll be all right. I’ll swing it for you.”
Haddon made no reply. At length he remarked:
“You’ll excuse me for a moment. I must telephone
to my hotel.”
He entered a booth in the shadow of the back of
the café, where there was a slot-machine pay-station.
“I think Haddon has his suspicions,” remarked Car-
ton, “although he is too prudent to say anything
yet.”
A moment later he returned. Something seemed
to have happened. He looked less nervous. His face
was brighter and his eyes clearer. What was it, I
wondered? Could it be that he was playing a game
with Carton and had given him a double cross? I
was quite surprised at his next remark.
“Carton,” he said confidently, “I’ll stick.”
“Good,” exclaimed the district attorney, as they
fell into a conversation in low tones.
“By the way,” drawled Kennedy, “I must telephone
to the office in case they need me.”
He had risen and entered the same booth.
Haddon and Carton were still talking earnestly.
It was evident that, for some reason, Haddon had lost
his former halting manner. Perhaps, I reasoned, the


256 The Dream Doctor
bomb episode had, after all, thrown a scare into him,
and he felt that he needed protection against his own
associates, who were quick to discover such dealings
as Carton had forced him into. I rose and lounged
back to the booth and Kennedy.
“Whom did he call?” I whispered, when Craig
emerged perspiring from the booth, for I knew that
that was his purpose.
Craig glanced at Haddon, who now seemed ab-
sorbed in talking to Carton. “No one,” he answered
quickly. “Central told me there had not been a call
from this pay-station for half an hour.”
“No one?” I echoed almost incredulously. “Then
what did he do? Something happened, all right.”
Kennedy was evidently engrossed in his own
thoughts, for he said nothing.
“Haddon says he wants to do some scouting
about,” announced Carton, when we rejoined them.
“There are several people whom he says he might sus-
pect. I’ve arranged to meet him this afternoon to
get the first part of this story about the inside work-
ing of the vice trust, and he will let me know if any-
thing develops then. You will be at your office?”
“Yes, one or the other of us,” returned Craig, in
a tone which Haddon could not hear.
In the meantime we took occasion to make some
inquiries of our own about Haddon and Loraine
Keith. They were evidently well known in the select
circle in which they travelled. Haddon had many
curious characteristics, chief of which to interest Ken-
nedy was his speed mania. Time and again he had
been arrested for exceeding the speed limit in taxi-


The Bomb Maker z
257
cabs and in a car of his own, often in the past with
Loraine Keith, but lately alone.
It was toward the close of the afternoon that Carton
called up hurriedly. As Kennedy hung up the re-
ceiver, I read on his face that something had gone
wrong.
“Haddon has disappeared,” he announced, “mys-
teriously and suddenly, without leaving so much as a
clue. It seems that he found in his office a package
exactly like that which was sent to Carton earlier in
the day. He didn’t wait to say anything about it,
but left. Carton is bringing it over here.”
Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, Carton himself
deposited the package on the laboratory table with
an air of relief. We looked eagerly. It was ad-
dressed to Haddon at the Mayfair in the same dis-
guised handwriting and was done up in precisely the
same fashion.
“Lots of bombs are just scare bombs,” observed
Craig. “But you never can tell.”
Again Kennedy had started to dissect.
“Ah,” he went on, “this is the real thing, though,
only a little different from the other. A dry bat-
tery gives a spark when the lid is slipped back. See,
the explosive is in a steel pipe. Sliding the lid off
is supposed to explode it. Why, there is enough ex-
plosive in this to have silenced a dozen Haddons.”
“Do you think he could have been kidnapped or
murdered?” I asked. “What is this, anyhow—gang-
War?”
“Or perhaps bribed?” suggested Carton.
“I can't say,” ruminated Kennedy. “But I can say


258 The Dream Doctor
this: that there is at large in this city a man of great
mechanical skill and practical knowledge of elec-
tricity and explosives. He is trying to make sure of
hiding something from exposure. We must find
him.”
“And especially Haddon,” Carton added quickly.
“He is the missing link. His testimony is absolutely
essential to the case I am building up.”
“I think I shall want to observe Loraine Keith
without being observed,” planned Kennedy, with a
hasty glance at his watch. “I think I’ll drop around
at this Mayfair I have heard so much about. Will
you come?”
“I’d better not,” refused Carton. “You know they
all know me, and everything quits wherever I go.
I’ll see you soon.”
As we drove in a cab over to the Mayfair, Kennedy
said nothing. I wondered how and where Haddon
had disappeared. Had the powers of evil in the city
learned that he was weakening and hurried him out
of the way at the last moment? Just what had Lo-
raine Keith to do with it? Was she in any way re-
sponsible? I felt that there were, indeed, no bounds
to what a jealous woman might dare.
Beside the ornate grilled doorway of the carriage
entrance of the Mayfair stood a gilt-and-black easel
with the words, “Tango Tea at Four.” Although it
was considerably after that time, there was a line of
taxi-cabs before the place and, inside, a brave array
of late-afternoon and early-evening revellers. The
public dancing had ceased, and a cabaret had taken /
its place.
|
ſ


The Bomb Maker 259
We entered and sat down at one of the more in-
conspicuous of the little round tables. On a stage,
one side, a girl was singing one of the latest synco-
ted airs.
“We'll just stick around a while, Walter,” whis-
pered Craig. “Perhaps this Loraine Keith will come
in.” -
Behind us, protected both by the music and the
rustle of people coming and going, a couple talked
in low tones. Now and then a word floated over to
me in a language which was English, sure enough,
but not of a kind that I could understand.
“Dropped by a flatty,” I caught once, then some-
thing about a “mouthpiece,” and the “bulls,” and
“making a plant.”
“A dip—pickpocket—and his girl, or gun-moll, as
they call them,” translated Kennedy. “One of their
number has evidently been picked up by a detective
and he looks to them for a good lawyer, or mouth-
piece.”
Besides these two there were innumerable other in-
teresting glimpses into the life of this meeting-place
for the half-and underworlds. A motion in the audi-
ence attracted me, as if some favourite performer were
about to appear, and I heard the “gun-moll” whisper,
“Loraine Keith.”
There she was, a petite, dark-haired, snappy-eyed
girl, chic, well groomed, and gowned so daringly that
every woman in the audience envied and every man
craned his neck to see her better. Loraine wore a
tight-fitting black dress, slashed to the knee. In fact,
everything was calculated to set her off at best ad-


The Bomb Maker 261
would try to pacify him; he would become more en-
raged. The dance became faster and more furious.
His violent efforts seemed to be to throw her to the
floor, and her streaming hair now made it seem more
like a fight than a dance. The audience hung breath-
less. It ended with her dropping exhausted, a proper
finale to this lowest and most brutal dance.
Panting, flushed, with an unnatural light in their
eyes, they descended to the audience and, scorning
the roar of applause to repeat the performance, sat
at a little table.
I saw a couple of girls come over toward the man.
“Give us a deck, Coke,” said one, in a harsh voice.
He nodded. A silver quarter gleamed momentarily
from hand to hand, and he passed to one girl stealth-
ily a small white-paper packet. Others came to him,
both men and women. It seemed to be an established
thing.
“Who is that?” asked Kennedy, in a low tone, of
the pickpocket back of us.
“Coke Brodie,” was the laconic reply.
“A cocaine fiend?”
“Yes, and a lobbygow for the grapevine system of
selling the dope under this new law.”
“Where does he get the supply to sell?” asked Ken-
nedy, casually.
The pickpocket shrugged his shoulders.
“No one knows, I suppose,” Kennedy commented
to me. “But he gets it in spite of the added restric-
tions and peddles it in little packets, adulterated,
and at a fabulous price for such cheap stuff. The
habit is spreading like wildfire. It is a fertile means


The Bomb Maker 263
Brodie rose and, with a nod to Loraine, went out, un-
steadily, now that the effect of the cocaine had worn
off. One wondered how this shuffling person could
ever have carried through the wild dance. It was
not Brodie who danced. It was the drug.
The dip slipped out after him, followed by the
woman. We rose and followed also. Across the city
Brodie slouched his way, with an evident purpose, it
seemed, of replenishing his supply and continuing his
round of peddling the stuff.
He stopped under the brow of a thickly populated
tenement row on the upper East Side, as though this
was his destination. There he stood at the gate that
led down to a cellar, looking up and down as if won-
dering whether he was observed. We had slunk into
a doorway.
A woman coming down the street, swinging a
chatelaine, walked close to him, spoke, and for a mo-
ment they•talked.
“It’s the gun-moll,” remarked Kennedy. “She’s
getting Brodie off his guard. This must be the root
of that grapevine system, as they call it.”
Suddenly from the shadow of the next house a
stealthy figure sprang out on Brodie. It was our dip,
a dip no longer but a regular stick-up man, with a
gun jammed into the face of his victim and a broad
Hand over his mouth. Skilfully the woman went
through Brodie's pockets, her nimble fingers missing
not a thing. -
“Now—beat it,” we heard the dip whisper hoarsely,
“and if you raise a holler, we'll get you right, next
time.”
/
2.


264 The Dream Doctor
Brodie fled as fast as his weakened nerves would
permit his shaky limbs to move. As he disappeared,
the dip sent something dark hurtling over the roof
of the house across the street and hurried toward us.
“What Was that?” I asked.
“I think it was the pistol on the end of a stout cord.
That is a favourite trick of the gunmen after a job.
It destroys at least a part of the evidence. You can’t
throw a gun very far alone, you know. But with it
at the end of a string you can lift it up over the roof
of a tenement. If Brodie Squeals to a copper and
these people are caught, they can’t hold them under
the pistol law, anyhow.”
The dip had caught sight of us, with his ferret eyes,
in the doorway. Quickly Kennedy passed over the
money in return for the motley array of objects taken
from Brodie. The dip and his gun-moll disappeared
into the darkness as quickly as they had emerged.
There was a curious assortment—the paraphernalia.
of a drug fiend, old letters, a key, and several other
useless articles. The pickpocket had retained the
money from the sale of the dope as his own particular
honorarium.
“Brodie has led us up to the source of his supply,” .
remarked Kennedy, thoughtfully regarding the stuff.
“And the dip has given us the key to it. Are you .
game to go in?” . . .
A glance up and down the street showed it still
deserted. We wormed our way in the shadow to the
cellar before which Brodie had stood. The outside
door was open. We entered, and Craig stealthily
struck a match, shading it in his hands.


The Bomb Maker 265 -
At one end we were confronted by a little door of
mystery, barred with iron and held by an innocent
enough looking padlock. It was this lock, evidently,
to which the key fitted, opening the way into the sub-
terranean vault of brick and stone. -
Kennedy opened it and pushed back the door.
There was a little square compartment, dark as pitch
and delightfully cool and damp. He lighted a match,
then hastily blew it out and switched on an electric
bulb which it disclosed.
“Can’t afford risks like that here,” he exclaimed,
carefully disposing of the match, as our eyes became
accustomed to the light.
On every side were pieces of gas-pipe, boxes, and
paper, and on shelves were jars of various materials.
There was a work-table littered with tools, pieces of
wire, boxes, and scraps of metal.
“My word!” exclaimed Kennedy, as he surveyed the
curious scene before us, “this is a regular bomb fac-
tory—one of the most amazing exhibits that the his-
tory of crime has ever produced.”


XVIII
The “Coke.” Fiend
FOLLOWED him in awe as he made a hasty in-
ventory of what we had discovered. There
were as many as a dozen finished and partly finished
infernal machines of various sizes and kinds, some
of tremendous destructive capacity. Kennedy did
not even attempt to study them. All about were high
explosives, chemicals, dynamite. There was gun-
powder of all varieties, antimony, blasting-powder,
mercury cyanide, chloral hydrate, chlorate of potash,
samples of various kinds of shot, some of the out-
lawed soft-nosed dumdum bullets, cartridges, shells,
pieces of metal purposely left with jagged edges,
platinum, aluminum, iron, steel—a conglomerate
mass of stuff that would have gladdened an anar-
chist.
Kennedy was examining a little quartz-lined elec-
tric furnace, which was evidently used for heating
soldering-irons and other tools. Everything had been
done, it seemed, to prevent explosions. There were
no open lights and practically no chance for heat to
be communicated far among the explosives. Indeed,
everything had been arranged to protect the operator
himself in his diabolical work.
Kennedy had switched on the electric furnace, a
from the various pieces of metal on the table selected
266


The “Coke.” Fiend 267
several. These he was placing together in a peculiar
manner, and to them he attached some copper wire
which lay in a corner in a roll.
Under the work-table, beneath the furnace, one
could feel the warmth of the thing slightly. Quickly
he took the curious affair, which he had hastily
shaped, and fastened it under the table at that point,
then led the wires out through a little barred win-
dow to an air-shaft, the only means of ventilation
of the place except the door.
While he was working I had been gingerly inspect-
ing the rest of the den. In a corner, just beside the
door, I had found a set of shelves and a cabinet. On
both were innumerable packets done up in white
paper. I opened one and found it contained sev-
eral pinches of a white, crystalline substance.
“Little portions of cocaine,” commented Kennedy,
when I showed him what I had found. “In the slang
of the fiends, “decks.’”
On the top of the cabinet he discovered a little
enamelled box, much like a snuff-box, in which were
also some of the white flakes. Quickly he emptied
them out and replaced them with others from jars
which had not been made up into packets.
“Why, there must be hundreds of ounces of the
stuff here, to say nothing of the various things they
adulterate it with,” remarked Kennedy. “No won-
der they are so careful when it is a felony even to
have it in your possession in such quantities. See
how careful they are about the adulteration, too.
You could never tell except from the effect whether
it was the pure or only a few-per-cent.-pure article.”


268 The Dream Doctor
Kennedy took a last look at the den, to make sure
that nothing had been disturbed that would arouse
suspicion.
“We may as well go,” he remarked. “To-morrow,
I want to be free to make the connection outside with
that wire in the shaft.”
Imagine our surprise, the next morning, when a
tap at our door revealed Loraine Keith herself.
“Is this Professor Kennedy?” she asked, gazing at
us with a half-wild expression which she was making
a tremendous effort to control. “Because if it is, I
have something to tell him that may interest Mr.
Carton.” -
We looked at her curiously. Without her make-up
she was pallid and yellow in spots, her hands trem-
bling, cold, and sweaty, her eyes sunken and glis-
tening, with pupils dilated, her breathing short and
hurried, restless, irresolute, and careless of her per-
sonal appearance.
“Perhaps you wonder how I heard of you and why
I have come to you,” she went on. “It is because I
have a confession to make. I saw Mr. Haddon just
before he was—kidnapped.” -
She seemed to hesitate over the word.
“How did you know I was interested?” asked Ken-
nedy keenly.
“I heard him mention your name with Mr. Car-
ton’s.”
“Then he knew that I was more than a reporter
for the Star,” remarked Kennedy. “Kidnapped, you
say? How?”


270 The Dream Doctor
that goes with it. It's soon gone, but while it lasts
I can sing and dance, do anything until every part
of my body begins crying for it again. I was full of
the stuff when this happened yesterday; had taken
too much, I guess.”
The change in her after she had snuffed some of
the crystals was magical. From a quivering wretch
she had become now a self-confident neurasthenic.
“You know where that stuff will land you, I pre-
sume?” questioned Kennedy.
“I don't care,” she laughed hollowly. “Yes, I
know what you are going to tell me. Soon I'll be
hunting for the cocaine bug, as they call it, imagin-
ing that in my skin, under the flesh, are worms crawl-
ing, perhaps see them, see the little animals running
around and biting me. Oh, you don’t know. Ther
are two souls to the cocainist. One is tortured º)
the suffering which the stuff brings; the other laughs
at the fears and pains. But it brings such thoughts!
It stimulates my mind, makes it work without,
against my will, gives me such visions—oh, I can not
go on. They would kill me if they knew I had come
to you. Why have I? Has not Haddon cast me off?
What is he to me, now?”
It was evident that she was growing hysterical. I
wondered whether, after all, the story of the kid-
napping of Haddon might not be a figment of her
brain, simply an hallucination due to the drug.
“They?” inquired Kennedy, observing her nar-
rowly. “Who?”
“I can’t tell. I don't know. Why did I come?
Why did I come?”


The “Coke.” Fiend 27I
She was reaching again for the snuff-box, but Ken-
nedy restrained her.
“Miss Keith,” he remarked, “you are concealing
something from me. There is some one,” he paused
a moment, “whom you are shielding.”
“No, no,” she cried. “He was taken. Brodie had
nothing to do with it, nothing. That is what you
mean. I know. This stuff increases my sensitive-
ness. Yet I hate Coke Brodie—oh—let me go. I
am all unstrung. Let me see a doctor. To-night,
when I am better, I will tell all.”
Loraine Keith had torn herself from him, had in-
stantly taken a pinch of the fatal crystals, with that
same ominous change from fear to self-confidence.
What had been her purpose in coming at all? It
had seemed at first to implicate Brodie, but she had
been quick to shield him when she saw that danger.
I wondered what the fascination might be which the
Wretch exercised over her.
“To-night—I will see you to-night,” she cried, and
a moment later she was gone, as unexpectedly as she
had come.
I looked at Kennedy blankly.
“What was the purpose of that outburst?” I
asked.
“I can’t say,” he replied. “It was all so incoherent
that, from what I know of drug fiends, I am sure she
had a deep-laid purpose in it all. It does not change
my plans.”
Two hours later we had paid a deposit on an empty
flat in the tenement-house in which the bomb-maker
had his headquarters, and had received a key to the


272 The Dream Doctor
apartment from the janitor. After considerable
difficulty, owing to the narrowness of the air-shaft,
Kennedy managed to pick up the loose ends of the
wire which had been led out of the little window.
at the base of the shaft, and had attached it to a
couple of curious arrangements which he had brought
with him. One looked like a large taximeter from
a motor cab; the other was a diminutive gas-metre,
in looks at least. Attached to them were several
bells and lights.
He had scarcely completed installing the thing,
whatever it was, when a gentle tap at the door star-
tled me. Kennedy nodded, and I opened it. It was
Carton. -
“I have had my men watching the Mayfair,” he
announced. “There seems to be a general feeling
of alarm there, now. They can’t even find Loraine
Keith. Brodie, apparently, has not shown up in his
usual haunts since the episode of last night.”
“I wonder if the long arm of this vice trust could
have reached out and gathered them in, too?” I
asked.
“Quite likely,” replied Carton, absorbed in watch-
ing Kennedy. “What's this?”
A little bell had tinkled sharply, and a light had
flashed up on the attachments to the apparatus.
“Nothing. I was just testing it to see if it works.
It does, although the end which I installed down
below was necessarily only a makeshift. It is not
this red light with the shrill bell that we are inter-
ested in. It is the green light and the low-toned bell.
This is a thermopile.”


The “Coke.” Fiend 273
“And what is a thermopile?” queried Carton.
“For the sake of one who has forgotten his
physics,” smiled Kennedy, “I may say this is only
another illustration of how all science ultimately
finds practical application. You probably have for-
gotten that when two half-rings of dissimilar metals
are joined together and one is suddenly heated or
chilled, there is produced at the opposite connecting
point a feeble current which will flow until the junc-
tures are both at the same temperature. You might
call this a thermo-electric thermometer, or a telether-
mometer, or a microthermometer, or any of a dozen
names.”
“Yes,” I agreed mechanically, only vaguely guess-
ing at what he had in mind.
“The accurate measurement of temperature is
still a problem of considerable difficulty,” he resumed,
adjusting the thermometer. “A heated mass can im-
part vibratory motion to the ether which fills space,
and the wave-motions of ether are able to reproduce
in other bodies motions similar to those by which
they are caused. At this end of the line I merely
measure the electromotive force developed by the dif-
ference in temperature of two similar thermo-electric
junctions, opposed. We call those junctions in a
thermopile ‘couples,’ and by getting the recording in-
struments sensitive enough, we can measure one one-
thousandth of a degree.
“Becquerel was the first, I believe, to use this prop-
erty. But the machine which you see here was one
recently invented for registering the temperature of
sea water so as to detect the approach of an iceberg.
-


274 The Dream Doctor
I saw no reason why it should not be used to measure
heat as well as cold.
“You see, down there I placed the couples of the
thermopile beneath the electric furnace on the table.
Here I have the mechanism operated by the feeble
current from the thermopile, opening and closing
switches, and actuating bells and lights. Then, too,
I have the recording instrument. The thing is funda-
mentally very simple and is based on well-known phe-
nomena. It is not uncertain and can be tested at
any time, just as I did then, when I showed a slight
fall in temperature. Of course it is not the slight
changes I am after, not the gradual but the sudden
changes in temperature.”
“I see,” said Carton. “If there is a drop, the cur-
rent goes one way and we see the red light; a rise
and it goes the other, and we see a green light.”
“Exactly,” agreed Kennedy. “No one is going to
approach that chamber down-stairs as long as he
thinks any one is watching, and we do not know
where they are watching. But the moment any Sud-
den great change is registered, such as turning on
that electric furnace, we shall know it here.”
It must have been an hour that we sat there dis-
cussing the merits of the case and speculating on the
strange actions of Loraine Keith.
Suddenly the red light flashed out brilliantly.
“What's that?” asked Carton quickly.
“I can’t tell, yet,” remarked Kennedy. “Perhaps
it is nothing at all. Perhaps it is a draught of cold
air from opening the door. We shall have to wait
and see.”


The “Coke.” Fiend 275
We bent over the little machine, straining our eyes
and ears to catch the visual and audible signals
which it gave.
Gradually the light faded, as the thermopile ad-
justed itself to the change in temperature.
Suddenly, without warning, a low-toned bell rang
before us and a bright-green light flashed up.
“That can have only one meaning,” cried Craig ex-
citedly. “Some one is down there in that inferno–
perhaps the bomb-maker himself.”
The bell continued to ring and the light to glow,
showing that whoever was there had actually started
the electric furnace. What was he preparing to do?
I felt that, even though we knew there was some one
there, it did us little good. I, for one, had no relish
for the job of bearding such a lion in his den.
We looked at Kennedy, wondering what he would
do next. From the package in which he had brought
the two registering machines he quietly took another
package, wrapped up, about eighteen inches long and
apparently very heavy. As he did so he kept his at-
tention fixed on the telethermometer. Was he going
to wait until the bomb-maker had finished what he
had come to accomplish?
It was perhaps fifteen minutes after our first
alarm that the signals began to weaken.
“Does that mean that he has gone—escaped?” in-
quired Carton anxiously.
“No. It means that his furnace is going at full
power and that he has forgotten it. It is what I
am waiting for. Come on.”
Seizing the package as he hurried from the room,


276 The Dream Doctor
Kennedy dashed out on the street and down the out-
side cellar stairs, followed by us.
He paused at the thick door and listened. Appar-
ently there was not a sound from the other side, ex-
cept a whir of a motor and a roar which might have
been from the furnace. Softly he tried the door. It
was locked on the inside.
Was the bomb-maker there still? He must be.
Suppose he heard us. Would he hesitate a moment
to send us all to perdition along with himself?
How were we to get past that door? Really, the
deathlike stillness on the other side was more mys-
terious than would have been the detonation of some
of the criminal's explosive.
Kennedy had evidently satisfied himself on one
point. If we were to get into that chamber we must
do it ourselves, and we must do it quickly.
From the package which he carried he pulled out
a stubby little cylinder, perhaps eighteen inches long,
very heavy, with a short stump of a lever projecting
from one side. Between the stonework of a chimney
and the barred door he laid it horizontally, jamming
in some pieces of wood to wedge it tighter.
Then he began to pump on the handle vigorously.
The almost impregnable door seemed slowly to bulge.
Still there was no sign of life from within. Had the
bomb-maker left before we arrived?
“This is my scientific sledge-hammer,” panted
Kennedy, as he worked the little lever backward and
forward more quickly—“a hydraulic ram. There is
no swinging of axes or wielding of crowbars neces-
sary in breaking down an obstruction like this, now-


278 The Dream Doctor
conscious. “There's something wrong with it, Had-
don.”
I looked more closely at the face in the half-dark-
IneSS.
It was Haddon himself. *
“I knew he'd come back when the craving for the
drug became intense enough,” remarked Kennedy.
Carton looked at Kennedy in amazement. Had-
don was the last person in the world whom he had evi-
dently expected to discover here.
“How—what do you mean?”
“The episode of the telephone booth gave me the
first hint. That is the favourite stunt of the drug
fiend—a few minutes alone, and he thinks no one
is the wiser about his habit. Then, too, there was
the story about his speed mania. That is a frequent
failing of the cocainist. The drug, too, was killing
his interest in Loraine Keith—that is the last stage.
“Yet under its influence, just as with his lobbygow
and lieutenant, Brodie, he found power and inspira-
tion. With him it took the form of bombs to protect
himself in his graft.”
“He can’t-escape this time—Loraine. We’ll leave
it—at his house—you know—Carton—”
We looked quickly at the work-table. On it was
a gigantic bomb of clockwork over which Haddon
had been working. The cocaine which was to have
given him inspiration had, thanks to Kennedy, over-
come him.
Beside Loraine Keith were a suit-case and a Glad-
stone. She had evidently been stuffing the corners
full of their favourite nepenthe, for, as Kennedy


The “Coke.” Fiend 279
reached down and turned over the closely packed
woman’s finery and the few articles belonging to Had-
don, innumerable packets from the cabinet dropped
Out.
“Hulloa-what's this?” he exclaimed, as he came
to a huge roll of bills and a mass of silver and gold
coin. “Trying to double-cross us all the time. That
was her clever game—to give him the hours he needed
to gather what money he could save and make a clean
getaway. Even cocaine doesn’t destroy the interest
of men and women in that,” he concluded, turning
Over to Carton the wealth which Haddon had amassed
as one of the meanest grafters of the city of graft.
Here was a case which I could not help letting the
Star have immediately. Notes or no notes, it was
local news of the first order. Besides, anything that
concerned Carton was of the highest political signifi-
Cance.
It kept me late at the office and I overslept. Con-
sequently I did not see much of Craig the next morn-
ing, especially as he told me he had nothing special,
having turned down a case of a robbery of a safe, on
the ground that the police were much better fitted
to catch ordinary yeggmen than he was. During the
day, therefore, I helped in directing the following
up of the Haddon case for the Star.
Then, suddenly, a new front page story crowded
this one of the main headlines. With a sigh of re-
lief, I glanced at the new thriller, found it had some-
thing to do with the Navy Department, and that it
came from as far away as Washington. There was
no reason now why others could not carry on the


282 The Dream Doctor
“There is usually very little about a battle-ship that is not
known before her keel is laid, or even before the signing of the
contracts. At any rate, when it is asserted that the plans repre-
sent the dernier cri in some form of war preparation, it is well
to remember that a “last cry' is last only until there is a
later. Naval secrets are few, anyway, and as it takes some years
to apply them, this loss cannot be of superlative value to any one.
Still, there is, of course, a market for such information in spite
of the progress toward disarmament, but the rule in this case
will be the rule as in a horse trade, “Caveat emptor.’”
“So there you are,” I concluded. “You pay your
penny for a paper, and you take your choice.”
“And the Star,” inquired Kennedy, coming to the
door and adding with an aggravating grin, “the in-
fallible?”
“The Star,” I replied, unruffled, “hits the point
squarely when it says that whether the plans were
of immediate importance or not, the real point is that
if they could be stolen, really important things could
be taken also. For instance, “The thought of what
the thief might have stolen has caused much more
alarm than the knowledge of what he has succeeded
in taking.’ I think it is about time those people in
Washington stopped the leak if—”
The telephone rang insistently.
“I think that's for me,” exclaimed Craig, bounding
out of his room and forgetting his quiz of me.
“Hello—yes—is that you, Burke? At the Grand
Central—half an hour—all right. I’m bringing
Jameson. Good-bye.”
JKennedy jammed down the receiver on the hook.
-


The Submarine Mystery 285
Navy Department, because they are too valuable even
to patent.” -
Burke, who liked a good detective tale himself,
seemed pleased at holding Kennedy spellbound.
“For instance,” he went on, “he has on the bay up
here a submarine which can be made into a crewless
dirigible. He calls it the Turtle, I believe, because
that was the name of the first American submarine
built by Dr. Bushnell during the Revolution, even
before Fulton.”
“You have theories of your own on the case?”
asked Craig.
“Well, there are several possibilities. You know
there are submarine companies in this country, bitter
rivals. They might like to have those plans. Then,
too, there are foreign governments.”
He paused. Though he said nothing, I felt that
there was no doubt what he hinted at. At least one
government occurred to me which would like the
plans above all others.
“Once some plans of a submarine were stolen, I
recall,” ruminated Kennedy. “But that theft, I am
satisfied, was committed in behalf of a rival com-
pany.”
“But, Kennedy,” exclaimed Burke, “it was bad
enough when the plans were stolen. Now Captain
Shirley wires me that some one must have tampered
with his model. It doesn’t work right. He even be-
lieves that his own life may be threatened. And
there is scarcely a real clue,” he added dejectedly.
“Of course we are watching all the employés who had
access to the draughting-room and tracing everybody


286 The Dream Doctor
who was in the building that night. I have a com-
plete list of them. There are three or four who will
bear watching. For instance, there is a young at-
taché of one of the embassies, named Nordheim.”
“Nordheim!” I echoed, involuntarily. I had ex-
pected an Oriental name.
“Yes, a German. I have been looking up his rec-
ord, and I find that once he was connected in some
way with the famous Titan Iron Works, at Kiel, Ger-
many. We began watching him day before yester-
day, but suddenly he disappeared. Then, there is a
society woman in Washington, a Mrs. Bayard Brain-
ard, who was at the Department that night. We have
been trying to find her. To-day I got word that she
was summering in the cottage colony across the bay
from Lookout Hill. At any rate, I had to go up there
to see the captain, and I thought I'd kill a whole flock
of birds with one stone. The chief thought, too, that
if you'd take the case with us you had best start on
it up there. Next, you will no doubt want to go back
to Washington with me.”
Lookout Hill was the name of the famous old es-
tate of the Shirleys, on a point of land jutting out
into Long Island Sound and with a neighbouring
point enclosing a large, deep, safe harbour. On the
highest ground of the estate, with a perfect view of
both harbour and sound, stood a large stone house,
the home of Captain Shirley, of the United States
navy, retired. *-
Captain Shirley, a man of sixty-two or three,
bronzed and wiry, met us eagerly.
“So this is Professor Kennedy; I’m glad to meet


The Submarine Mystery 287
you, sir,” he welcomed, clasping Craig's hand in both
of his—a fine figure as he stood erect in the light of
the portecochère. “What's the news from Washing-
ton, Burke? Any clues?”
“I can hardly tell,” replied the secret service man,
with assumed cheerfulness. “By the way, you’ll have
to excuse me for a few minutes while I run back into
town on a little errand. Meanwhile, Captain, will
you explain to Professor Kennedy just how things
are? Perhaps he'd better begin by seeing the Turtle
herself.”
Burke had not waited longer than to take leave.
“The Turtle,” repeated the captain, leading the
way into the house. “Well, I did call it that at first.
But I prefer to call it the Z99. You know the first
submarines, abroad at least, were sometimes called
A1, A2, A3, and so on. They were of the diving,
plunging type, that is, they submerged on an inclined
keel, nose down, like the Hollands. Then came the
B type, in which the hydroplane appeared; the C
type, in which it was more prominent, and a D type,
where submergence is on a perfectly even keel, some-
what like our Lakes. Well, this boat of mine is a last
word—the Z99. Call it the Turtle, if you like.”
We were standing for a moment in a wide Colonial
hall in which a fire was crackling in a huge brick
fireplace, taking the chill off the night air.
“Let me give you a demonstration, first,” added the
captain. “Perhaps Z99 will work—perhaps not.”
There was an air of disappointment about the old
veteran as he spoke, uncertainly now, of what a short
time ago he had known to be a certainty and one of


288 The Dream Doctor
the greatest it had ever been given the inventive mind
of man to know.
A slip of a girl entered from the library, saw us,
paused, and was about to turn back. Silhouetted
against the curtained door, there was health, anima-
tion, gracefulness, in every line of her wavy chestnut
hair, her soft, sparkling brown eyes, her white dress
and hat to match, which contrasted with the healthy
glow of tan on her full neck and arms, and her dainty
little white shoes, ready for anything from tennis to
tango.
“My daughter Gladys, Professor Kennedy and Mr.
Jameson,” introduced the captain. “We are going
to try the Z99 again, Gladys.” **
A moment later we four were walking to the edge
of the cliff where Captain Shirley had a sort of work-
shop and signal-station.
He lighted the gas, for Lookout Hill was only on
the edge of the town and boasted gas, electricity, and
, all modern improvements, as well as the atmosphere
of old New England.
“The Z99 is moored just below us at my private
dock,” began the captain. “I have a shed down there
where we usually keep her, but I expected you, and
she is waiting, thoroughly overhauled. I have sig-
nalled to my men—fellows I can trust, too, who used
to be with me in the navy—to cast her off. There—
now we are ready.”
The captain turned a switch. Instantly a couple
of hundred feet below us, on the dark and rippling
water, a light broke forth. Another signal, and the
light changed.


The Submarine Mystery 289
It was moving.
“The principle of the thing,” said Captain Shirley,
talking to us but watching the moving light intently,
“briefly, is that I use the Hertzian waves to actuate
relays on the Z99. That is, I send a child with a
message; the grown man, through the relay, so to
speak, does the work. So, you see, I can sit up here
and send my little David out anywhere to strike down
a huge Goliath.
“I won’t bore you, yet, with explanations of my
radio-combinator, the telecommutator, the aerial co-
herer relay, and the rest of the technicalities of wire-
less control of dirigible, self-propelled vessels. They
are well known, beginning with pioneers like Wilson
and Gardner in England, Roberts in Australia, Wirth
and Lirpa in Germany, Gabet in France, and Tesla,
Edison, Sims, and the younger Hammond in our own
country.
“The one thing, you may not know, that has kept us
back while wireless telegraphy has gone ahead so fast
is that in wireless we have been able to discard co-
herers and relays and use detectors and microphones
in their places. But in telautomatics we have to keep
the coherer. That has been the barrier. The coherer
until recently has been spasmodic, until we had Ham-
mond's mercury steel-disc coherer and now my own.
Why,” he cried, “we are just on the threshold, now,
of this great science which Tesla has named telauto-
matics—the electric arm that we can stretch out
through space to do our work and fight our battles.”
It was not difficult to feel the enthusiasm of the
captain over an invention of such momentous possi-


290 The Dream Doctor
bilities, especially as the Z99 was well out in the
harbour now and we could see her flashing her red
and green signal-lights back to us.
“You see,” the captain resumed, “I have twelve
numbers here on the keys of this radio-combinator—
forward, back, stop propeller motor, rudder right,
rudder left, stop steering motor, light signals front,
light signals rear, launch torpedoes, and so on. The
idea is that of a delayed contact. The machinery is
always ready, but it delays a few seconds until the
right impulse is given, a purely mechanical problem.
I take advantage of the delay to have the message re-
peated by a signal back to me. I can even change it,
then. You can see for yourself that it really takes
no experience to run the thing when all is going
right. Gladys has done it frequently herself. All
you have to do is to pay attention, and press the right
key for the necessary change. It is when things go
wrong that even an expert like myself—confound it
—there's something wrong!”
The Z99 had suddenly swerved. Captain Shir-
ley's brow knitted. We gathered around closer,
Gladys next to her father and leaning anxiously over
the transmitting apparatus.
“I wanted to turn her to port yet she goes to star.
board, and signals starboard, too. There—now—she
has stopped altogether. What do you think of that?”
Gladys stroked the old seafarer's hand gently, as
he sat silently at the table, peering with contracted
brows out into the now brilliantly moonlit night.
Shirley looked up at his daughter, and the lines


The Submarine Mystery 291
on his face relaxed as though he would hide his dis-
appointment from her eager eyes.
“Confound that light! What's the matter with it?”
he exclaimed, changing the subject, and glancing up
at the gas-fixture.
Kennedy had already been intently looking at the
Welsbach burner overhead, which had been flickering
incessantly.
“That gas company ſ” added the Captain, shaking
his head in disgust, and showing annoyance over a
trivial thing to hide deep concern over a greater, as
some men do. “I shall use the electricity altogether
after this contract with the company expires. I sup-
pose you literary men, Mr. Jameson, would call that
the light that failed.”
There was a forced air about his attempt to be face-
tious that did not conceal, but rather accentuated,
the undercurrent of feelings in him.
“On the contrary,” broke in Kennedy, “I shouldn’t
be surprised to find that it is the light that suc-
ceeded.”
. “How do you mean?”
“I wouldn’t have said anything about it if you
hadn’t noticed it yourself. In fact, I may be wrong.
It suggests something to me, but it will need a good
deal of work to verify it, and then it may not be of
any significance. Is that the way the Z99 has be-
haved always lately?”
“Yes, but I know that she hasn't broken down of
herself,” Captain Shirley asserted. “It never did be-
fore, not since I perfected that new coherer. And


292 The Dream Doctor
now it always does, perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes
after I start her out.”
Shirley was watching the lights as they serpentined
their way to us across the nearly calm water of the
bay, idly toying with the now useless combinator.
“Wait here,” he said, rising hurriedly. “I must
send my motor-boat out there to pick her up and tow
her in.”
He was gone down the flight of rustic steps on the
face of the cliff before we could reply.
“I wish father wouldn't take it to heart so,” mur-
mured Gladys. “Sometimes I fear that success or
failure of this boat means life or death to him.”
“That is exactly why we are here,” reassured Ken-
nedy, turning earnestly to her, “to help him to settle
this thing at once. This is a beautiful spot,” he
added, as we stood on the edge of the cliff and looked
far out over the tossing waves of the sound.
“What is on that other point?” asked Kennedy,
turning again toward the harbour itself.
“There is a large cottage colony there,” she replied.
“Of course many of the houses are still closed so early
in the season, but it is a beautiful place in the sum-
mer. The hotel over there is open now, though.”
“You must have a lively time when the season is
at its height,” ventured Kennedy. “Do you know a
cottager there, a Mrs. Brainard?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. I have known her in Washing-
ton for some time.”
“No doubt the cottagers envy you your isolation
here,” remarked Kennedy, turning and surveying the
beautifully kept grounds. “I should think it would


w The Submarine Mystery 293
be pleasant, too, to have an old Washington friend
here.”
“It is. We often invite our friends over for lawn-
parties and other little entertainments. Mrs. Brainard
has just arrived and has only had time to return my
first visit to her, but I expect we shall have some good
times this summer.”
It was evident, at least, that Gladys was not con-
cealing anything about her friend, whether there was
any suspicion or not of her.
We had gone into the house to await the return of
Captain Shirley. Burke had just returned, his face
betraying that he was bursting with news.
“She's here, all right,” he remarked in an under-
tone to Kennedy, “in the Stamford cottage—quite an
outfit. French chauffeur, two Japanese servants,
maids, and all.”
“The Stamford cottage?” repeated Gladys. “Why,
that is where Mrs. Brainard lives.”
She gave a startled glance at Kennedy, as she sud-
denly seemed to realise that both he and the secret-
service man had spoken about her friend.
“Yes,” said Burke, noting on the instant the perfect
innocence of her concern. “What do you know about
Mrs. Brainard? Who, where is, Mr. Brainard?”
“Dead, I believe,” Gladys hesitated. “Mrs. Brain-
ard has been well known in Washington circles for
years. Indeed, I invited her with us the night of
the Manila display.”
“And Mr. Nordheim?” broke in Burke.
“N-no,” she hesitated. “He was there, but I don't
know as whose guest.”


294 The Dream Doctor
“Did he seem very friendly with Mrs. Brainard?”
pursued the detective.
I thought I saw a shade of relief pass over her face
as she answered, “Yes.” I could only interpret it
that perhaps Nordheim had been attentive to Gladys
herself and that she had not welcomed his attentions,
“I may as well tell you,” she said, at length. “It
is no secret in our set, and I suppose you would find
it out soon, anyhow. It is said that he is engaged to
Mrs. Brainard—that is all.”
“Engaged?” repeated Burke. “Then that would
account for his being at the hotel here. At least, it
would offer an excuse.”
Gladys was not slow to note the stress that Burke
laid on the last word.
“Oh, impossible,” she began hurriedly, “impossible
that he could have known anything about this other
matter. Why, she told me he was to sail suddenly
for Germany and came up here for a last visit before
he went, and to arrange to come back on his return.
Oh, he could know nothing—impossible.”
“Why impossible?” persisted Burke. “They have
submarines in Germany, don’t they? And rival com-
panies, too.”
“Who have rival companies?” inquired a familiar
voice. It was Captain Shirley, who had returned out
of breath from his long climb up the steps from the
shore.
“The Germans. I was speaking of an attaché
named Nordheim.”
“Who is Nordheim?” inquired the captain.


The Submarine Mystery 295
“You met him at the Naval building, that night,
don't you remember?” replied Gladys.
“Oh, yes, I believe I do—dimly. He was the man
who seemed so devoted to Mrs. Brainard.”
“I think he is, too, father,” she replied hastily.
“He has been suddenly called to Berlin and planned to
spend the last few days here, at the hotel, so as to be
near her. She told me that he had been ordered back
to Washington again before he sailed and had had to
cut his visit short.”
“When did you first notice the interference with the
Turtle?” asked Burke. “I received your message
this morning.”
“Yesterday morning was the first,” replied the cap-
tain.
“He arrived the night before and did not leave un-
til yesterday afternoon,” remarked Burke.
“And we arrived to-night,” put in Craig quietly.
“The interference is going on yet.”
“Then the Japs,” I cut in, at last giving voice to
the suspicion I had of the clever little Orientals.
“They could not have stolen the plans,” asserted
Burke, shaking his head. “No, Nordheim and Mrs.
Brainard were the only ones who could have got into
the draughting-room the night of the Manila celebra-
tion.”
“Burke,” said Kennedy, rising, “I wish you would
take me into town. There are a few messages I would
like to send. You will excuse us, Captain, for a few
hours? Good evening, Miss Shirley.” As he bowed
I heard Kennedy add to her: “Don’t worry about


The Submarine Mystery 297
“Why, I assumed that he had gone back, until you
told me there was interference to-night, too. Now,
until I can locate him definitely I’m all at sea—that's
all.”
It was now getting late in the evening, but Ken-
nedy had evidently no intention of returning yet to
Lookout Hill. We paused at the hotel, which was in
the centre of the cottage colony, and flanked by a hill
that ran back of the colony diagonally and from which
a view of both the hotel and the cottages could be ob-
tained. Burke's inquiries developed the fact that
Nordheim had left very hurriedly and in some agita-
tion. “To tell you the truth,” confided the clerk,
with whom Burke had ingratiated himself, “I thought
he acted like a man who was watched.”
Late as it was, Kennedy insisted on motoring to
the railroad station and catching the last train to
New York. As there seemed to be nothing that I
could do at Lookout Hill, I accompanied him on the
long and tedious ride, which brought us back to the
city in the early hours of the morning.
We stopped just long enough to run up to the labo-
ratory and to secure a couple of little instruments
which looked very much like small incandescent
lamps in a box. Then, by the earliest train from
New York, we returned to Lookout Hill, with only
such sleep as Kennedy had predicted, snatched in the
day coaches of the trains and during a brief wait in
the station.
A half-hour's freshening up with a dip in the biting
cold water of the bay, breakfast with Captain Shirley
and Miss Gladys, and a return to the excitement of


298 The Dream Doctor
the case, had to serve in place of rest. Burke disap-
peared, after a hasty conference with Kennedy, pre-
sumably to watch Mrs. Brainard, the hotel, and the
Stamford cottage to see who went in and out.
“I’ve had the Z99 brought out of its shed,” re-
marked the captain, as we rose from the breakfast-
table. “There was nothing wrong as far as I could
discover last night or by a more careful inspection
this morning. I’d like to have you take a look at
her now, in the daylight.”
“I was about to suggest,” remarked Kennedy, as
we descended the steps to the shore, “that perhaps,
first, it might be well to take a short run in her with
the crew, just to make sure that there is nothing
wrong with the machinery.”
“A good idea,” agreed the captain.
We came to the submarine, lying alongside the dock
and looking like a huge cigar. The captain preceded
us down the narrow hatchway, and I followed Craig.
The deck was cleared, the hatch closed, and the vessel
sealed.


The Wireless Detector 301
“The Z99,” he went on, “is a submersible, not a
diving, submarine. That is to say, the rudder guides
it and changes the angle of the boat. But the hydro-
planes pull it up and down, two pairs of them set fore
and aft of the centre of gravity. They lift or lower
the boat bodily on an even keel, not by plunging and
diving. I will now set the hydroplanes at ten degrees
down and the horizontal rudder two degrees up, and
the boat will submerge to a depth of thirty feet and
run constant at that depth.”
He had shut off the gasoline motor and started the
storage-battery electric motor, which was used when
running submerged. The great motors gave out a
strange, humming sound. The crew conversed in
low, constrained tones. There was a slightly percep-
tible jar, and the boat seemed to quiver just a bit
from stem to stern. In front of Shirley was a gauge
which showed the depth of submergence and a spirit-
level which showed any inclination.
“Submerged,” he remarked, “is like running on the
surface under dense-fog conditions.”
I did not agree with those who have said there is
no difference running submerged or on the surface.
Under way on the surface was one thing. But when
we dived it was most unpleasant. I had been reas-
Sured at the start when I heard that there were ten
compressed-air tanks under a pressure of two thou-
sand pounds to the square inch. But only once be-
fore had I breathed compressed air and that was
when one of our cases once took us down into the tun-
nels below the rivers of New York. It was not a new
sensation, but at fifty feet depth I felt a little tingling


302 The Dream Doctor
all over my body, a pounding of the ear-drums, and
just a trace of nausea.
Kennedy smiled as I moved about. “Never mind,
Walter,” he said. “I know how you feel on a first
trip. One minute you are choking from lack of oxy-
gen, then in another part of the boat you are exhila-
rated by too much of it. Still,” he winked, “don’t for-
get that it is regulated.” .
“Well,” I returned, “all I can say is that if war is
hell, a submarine is war.”
I had, however, been much interested in the things
about me. Forward, the torpedo-discharge tubes and
other apparatus about the little doors in the vessel's
nose made it look somewhat like the shield used in
boring a tunnel under compressed air.
“Ordinary torpedo-boats use the regular automo-
bile torpedo,” remarked Captain Shirley, coming
ubiquitously up behind me. “I improve on that. I
can discharge the telautomobile torpedo, and guide it
either from the boat, as we are now, or from the land
station where we were last night, at will.”
There was something more than pride in his man-
ner. He was deadly in earnest about his invention.
We had come over to the periscope, the “eye” of the
submarine when she is running just under the sur-
face, but of no use that we were below. “Yes,” he
remarked, in answer to my half-spoken question,
“that is the periscope. Usually there is one fixed to
look ahead and another that is movable, in order to
take in what is on the sides and in the rear. I have
both of those. But, in addition, I have the universal
periscope, the eye that sees all around, three hundred


The Wireless Detector 305
The lines in Craig's face deepened in thought as
he folded the message and remarked abstractedly,
“She works all right when you are aboard.” Then
he recalled himself. “Let us try her again without a
crew.”
Five minutes later we had ascended to the aerial
conning-tower, and all was in readiness to repeat the
trial of the night before. Vicious and sly the Z99
looked in the daytime as she slipped off, under the
unseen guidance of the wireless, with death hidden
under her nose. Just as during the first trial we had
witnessed, she began by fulfilling the highest expec-
tations. Straight as an arrow she shot out of the har-
bour's mouth, half submerged, with her periscope
sticking up and bearing the flag proudly flapping,
leaving behind a wake of white foam.
She turned and re-entered the harbour, obeying
Captain Shirley's every whim, twisting in and out of
the shipping much to the amazement of the old salts,
who had never become used to the weird sight. She
cut a figure eight, stopped, started again.
Suddenly I could see by the look on Captain Shir-
ley's face that something was wrong. Before either
of us could speak, there was a spurt of water out in
the harbour, a cloud of spray, and the Z99 sank in a
mass of bubbles. She had heeled over and was rest-
ing on the mud and ooze of the harbour bottom. The
water had closed over her, and she was gone.
Instantly all the terrible details of the sinking of
the Lutin and other submarines flashed over me. I
fancied I could see on the Z99 the overturned ac-
cumulators. I imagined the stifling fumes, the strug-


The Wireless Detector 307
Kennedy was sitting silently in the corner, oblivi-
ous to us up to this point.
“But not to impulses from outside the hull,” he
broke in.
Unobserved, he had been bending over one of the
little instruments which had kept us up all night and
had cost a tedious trip to New York and back.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“This? This is a little instrument known as the
audion, a wireless electric-wave detector.”
“Outside the hull?” repeated Shirley, still dazed.
“Yes,” cried Kennedy excitedly. “I got my first
clue from that flickering Welsbach mantle last night.
Of course it flickered from the wireless we were using,
but it kept on. You know in the gas-mantle there is
matter in a most mobile and tenuous state, very sensi-
tive to heat and sound vibrations. -
“Now, the audion, as you see, consists of two plat-
inum wings, parallel to the plane of a bowed filament
of an incandescent light in a vacuum. It was in-
vented by Dr. Lee DeForest to detect wireless. When
the light is turned on and the little tantalum filament
glows, it is ready for business.
“It can be used for all systems of wireless—singing
spark, quenched spark, arc sets, telephone sets; in
fact, it will detect a wireless wave from whatever
source it is sent. It is so susceptible that a man
with one attached to an ordinary steel-rod umbrella
on a rainy night can pick up wireless messages that
are being transmitted within some hundreds of miles
radius.”
The audion buzzed.


308 The Dream Doctor
“There—see? Our wireless is not working. But
with the audion you can see that some wireless is, and
a fairly near and powerful source it is, too.”
Kennedy was absorbed in watching the audion.
Suddenly he turned and faced us. He had evi-
dently reached a conclusion. “Captain,” he cried,
“can you send a wireless message? Yes? Well, this
is to Burke. He is over there back of the hotel on
the hill with some of his men. He has one there who
understands wireless, and to whom I have given an-
other audion. Quick, before this other wireless cuts
in on us again. I want others to get the message as
well as Burke. Send this: ‘Have your men watch
the railroad station and every road to it. Surround
the Stamford cottage. There is some wireless inter-
ference from that direction.’”
As Shirley, with a half-insane light in his eyes,
flashed the message mechanically through space,
Craig rose and signalled to the house. Under the
portecochére I saw a waiting automobile, which an
instant later tore up the broken-stone path and
whirled around almost on two wheels near the edge
of the cliff. Glowing with health and excitement,
Gladys Shirley was at the wheel herself. In spite of
the tenseness of the situation, I could not help stop-
ping to admire the change in the graceful, girlish
figure of the night before, which was now all lithe en-
ergy and alertness in her eager devotion to carrying
out the minutest detail of Kennedy's plan to aid her
father.
“Excellent, Miss Shirley,” exclaimed Kennedy,
“but when I asked Burke to have you keep a car in


The Wireless Detector 309
readiness, I had no idea you would drive it yourself.”
“I like it,” she remonstrated, as he offered to take
the wheel. “Please—please—let me drive. I shall
go crazy if I’m not doing something. I saw the Z99
go down. What was it? Who-"
“Captain,” called Craig. “Quick—into the car.
We must hurry. To the Stamford house, Miss Shir-
ley. No one can get away from it before we arrive.
It is surrounded.”
Everything was quiet, apparently, about the house
as our wild ride around the edge of the harbour ended
under the deft guidance of Gladys Shirley. Here and
there, behind a hedge or tree, I could see a lurking
secret-service man. Burke joined us from behind a
barn next door.
“Not a soul has gone in or out,” he whispered.
“There does not seem to be a sign of life there.”
Craig and Burke had by this time reached the broad
veranda. They did not wait to ring the bell, but car-
ried the door down literally off its hinges. We fol-
lowed closely.
A scream from the drawing-room brought us to a
halt. It was Mrs. Brainard, tall, almost imperial in
her loose morning gown, her dark eyes snapping fire
at the sudden intrusion. I could not tell whether she
had really noticed that the house was watched or was
acting a part.
“What does this mean?” she demanded. “What—
Gladys—you—”
“Florence—tell them—it isn’t so—is it? You
don’t know a thing about those plans of father's that
were—stolen—that night.”


The Wireless Detector 313'
seriously, last night we slept principally in day
coaches. Really I must turn the case over to Burke
now and get back to the city to-night early.”
They insisted on accompanying us to the station,
and there the congratulations were done all over
again.
“Why,” exclaimed Kennedy, as we settled ourselves
in the Pullman after waving a final good-bye, “I
shall be afraid to go back to that town again. I—I
almost did kiss her!”
Then his face settled into its usual stern lines, al-
though softened, I thought. I am sure that it was
not the New England landscape, with its quaint stone,
fences, that he looked at out of the window, but the
recollection of the bright dashing figure of Gladys
Shirley.
It was seldom that a girl made so forcible an im-
pression on Kennedy, I know, for on our return he
fairly dived into work, like the Z99 herself, and I did
not see him all the next day until just before dinner
time. Then he came in and spent half an hour re-
storing his acid-stained fingers to something like hu-
man semblance.
He said nothing about his research work of the day,
and I was just about to remark that a day had passed
without its usual fresh alarum and excursion, when a
tap on the door buzzer was followed by the entrance of
our old friend Andrews, head of the Great Eastern
Life Insurance Company’s own detective service.
“Kennedy,” he began, “I have a startling case for
you. Can you help me out with it?”
As he sat down heavily, he pulled from his immense


314 The Dream Doctor
black wallet some scraps of paper and newspaper
cuttings.
“You recall, I suppose,” he went on, unfolding the
papers without waiting for an answer, “the recent
death of young Montague Phelps, at Woodbine, just
outside the city?”
Kennedy nodded. The death of Phelps, about ten
days before, had attracted nation-wide attention be-
cause of the heroic fight for life he had made against
what the doctors admitted had puzzled them—a new
and baffling manifestation of coma. They had la-
boured hard to keep him awake, but had not suc-
ceeded, and after several days of lying in a comatose
state he had finally succumbed. It was one of those
strange but rather frequent cases of long sleeps re-
ported in the newspapers, although it was by no means
one which might be classed as record-breaking.
The interest in Phelps lay, a great deal, in the fact
that the young man had married the popular dancer,
Anginette Petrovska, a few months previously. His
honeymoon trip around the world had suddenly been
interrupted, while the couple were crossing Siberia,
by the news of the failure of the Phelps banking-house
in Wall Street and the practical wiping-out of his for-
tune. He had returned, only to fall a victim to a
greater misfortune.
“A few days before his death,” continued Andrews,
measuring his words carefully, “I, or rather the Great
Eastern, which had been secretly investigating the
case, received this letter. What do you think of it?”
He spread out on the table a crumpled note in a pal-
pably disguised handwriting:


The Wireless Detector 315
To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN :
You would do well to look into the death of Montague Phelps,
Jr. I accuse no one, assert nothing. But when a young man,
apparently in the best of health, drops off so mysteriously and
even the physician in the case can give no very convincing in-
formation, that case warrants attention. I know what I know.
- AN OUTSIDER.


XXI
The Ghouls
66 -M,” mused Kennedy, weighing the contents
H of the note carefully, “one of the family, I'll
be bound—unless the whole thing is a hoax. By the
way, who else is there in the immediate family?”
“Only a brother, Dana Phelps, younger and some-
what inclined to wildness, I believe. At least, his fa-
ther did not trust him with a large inheritance, but
left most of his money in trust. But before we go
any further, read that.”
Andrews pulled from the papers a newspaper cut-
ting on which he had drawn a circle about the follow-
ing item. As we read, he eyed us sharply.
PHELPS TOMB DESECRATED
Last night, John Shaughnessy, a night watchman employed by
the town of Woodbine, while on his rounds, was attracted by
noises as of a violent struggle near the back road in the Wood-
bine Cemetery, on the outskirts of the town. He had varied his
regular rounds because of the recent depredations of motor-car
yeggmen who had timed him in pulling off several jobs lately.
As he hurried toward the large mausoleum of the Phelps fam-
ily, he saw two figures slink away in opposite directions in the
darkness. One of them, he asserts positively, seemed to be a
woman in black, the other a man whom he could not see clearly.
They readily eluded pursuit in the shadows, and a moment later
he heard the whir of a high-powered car, apparently bearing them
away.
316


The Ghouls 3.19
victim to take out insurance in his favour. In sui-
cide cases, the insured does so himself. Just after
his return home, young Phelps, who carried fifty thou-
sand dollars already, applied for and was granted
one of the largest policies we have ever written—half
a million.”
“Was it incontestible without the Suicide clause?”
asked Kennedy.
“Yes,” replied Andrews, “and suicide is the first
and easiest theory. Why, you have no idea how com-
mon the crime of suicide for the sake of the life in-
surance is becoming. Nowadays, we insurance men
almost believe that every one who contemplates end-
ing his existence takes out a policy so as to make his
life, which is useless to him, a benefit, at least, to some
one—and a nightmare to the insurance detective.”
“I know,” I cut in, for I recalled having been rather
interested in the Phelps case at the time, “but I
thought the doctors said finally that death was due to
heart failure.”
“Doctor Forden who signed the papers said so,”
corrected Andrews. “Heart failure—what does that
mean? As well say breath failure, or nerve failure.
I’ll tell you what kind of failure I think it was. It
was money failure. Hard times and poor investments
struck Phelps before he really knew how to handle
his small fortune. It called him home and—pouf –
he is off—to leave to his family a cool half-million by
his death. But did he do it himself or did some one
else do it? That's the question.”
“What is your theory,” inquired Kennedy absently,
“assuming there is no scandal hidden in the life of


The Ghouls 321
modern science, could not restrain a weird and creepy
sensation.
“Here is the Phelps tomb,” directed Andrews, paus-
ing beside a marble structure of Grecian lines and
pulling out a duplicate key of a new lock which had
been placed on the heavy door of grated iron. As we
entered, it was with a shudder at the damp odour of
decay. Kennedy had brought his little electric bull's-
eye, and, as he flashed it about, we could see at a
glance that the reports had not been exaggerated.
Everything showed marks of a struggle. Some of
the ornaments had been broken, and the coffin itself
had been forced open.
“I have had things kept just as we found them,” ex-
plained Andrews.
Kennedy peered into the broken coffin long and at-
tentively. With a little effort I, too, followed the
course of the circle of light. The body was, as An-
drews had said, in an excellent, indeed a perfect,
state of preservation. There were, strange to say,
no marks of decay.
“Strange, very strange,” muttered Kennedy to him-
self.
“Could it have been some medical students, body-
snatchers?” I asked musingly. “Or was it simply a
piece of vandalism? I wonder if there could have
been any jewels buried with him, as Shaughnessy
said? That would make the motive plain robbery.”
“There were no jewels,” said Andrews, his mind
not on the first part of my question, but watching
Kennedy intently.
Craig had dropped on his knees on the damp, mil.


322 The Dream Doctor
dewed floor, and bringing his bull's-eye close to the
stones, was examining some spots here and there.
“There could not have been any substitution?” I
whispered, with my mind still on the broken coffin.
“That would cover up the evidence of a poisoning,
you know.”
“No,” replied Andrews positively, “although bod-
ies can be obtained cheaply enough from a morgue,
ostensibly for medical purposes. No, that is Phelps,
all right.”
“Well, then,” I persisted, “body-snatchers, medical
students?”
“Not likely, for the same reason,” he rejected.
We bent over closer to watch Kennedy. Appar-
ently he had found a number of round, flat spots with
little spatters beside them. He was carefully trying
to scrape them up with as little of the surrounding
mould as possible.
Suddenly, without warning, there was a noise out-
side, as if a person were moving through the under-
brush. It was fearsome in its suddenness. Was it
human or wraith? Kennedy darted to the door in
time to see a shadow glide silently away, lost in the
darkness of the fine old willows. Some one had ap-
proached the mausoleum for a second time, not know-
ing we were there, and had escaped. Down the road
we could hear the purr of an almost silent motor.
“Somebody is trying to get in to conceal something
here,” muttered Kennedy, stifling his disappointment
at not getting a closer view of the intruder.
“Then it was not a suicide,” I exclaimed. “It was
a murder P’


The Ghouls 328
Craig shook his mead sententiously. Evidently he
was not prepared yet to talk. -
With another look at the body in the broken casket
The remarked: “To-morrow I want to call on Mrs.
Phelps and Doctor Forden, and, if it is possible to
find him, Dana Phelps. Meanwhile, Andrews, if you
and Walter will stand guard here, there is an appa-
ratus which I should like to get from my laboratory
and set up here before it is too late.” -
It was far past the witching hour of midnight,
when graveyards proverbially yawn, before Craig re-
turned in the car. Nothing had happened in the
meantime except those usual eery noises that one may
hear in the country at night anywhere. Our visitor
of the early evening seemed to have been scared away
for good.
Inside the mausoleum, Kennedy set up a pecu-
liar machine which he attached to the electric-light
circuit in the street by a long wire which he ran
loosely over the ground. Part of the apparatus con-
sisted of an elongated box lined with lead, to which
were several other attachments, the nature of which
I did not understand, and a crank-handle.
“What's that?” asked Andrews curiously, as Craig
set up a screen between the apparatus and the body.
“This is a calcium-tungsten screen,” remarked Ken-
nedy, adjusting now what I know to be a Crookes’
tube on the other side of the body itself, so that the or-
der was: the tube, the body, the screen, and the ob-
long box. Without a further word we continued to
watch him.
At last, the apparatus adjusted apparently to his


The Ghouls 325
with a letter of introduction from Andrews to Mrs. '
Phelps.
She proved to be a young woman of most extraor-
dinary grace and beauty, with a superb carriage such
as only years of closest training under the best dan-
cers of the world could give. There was a peculiar
velvety softness about her flesh and skin, a witching
stoop to her shoulders that was decidedly continental,
and in her deep, soulful eyes a half-wistful look that
was most alluring. In fact, she was as attractive a
widow as the best Fifth Avenue dealers in mourning
goods could have produced.
I knew that 'Ginette Phelps had been, both as dan-
cer and wife, always the centre of a group of actors,
artists, and men of letters as well as of the world and
affairs. The Phelpses had lived well, although they
were not extremely wealthy, as fortunes go. When
the blow fell, I could well fancy that the loss of his
money had been most serious to young Montague, who
had showered everything as lavishly as he was able
upon his captivating bride.
Mrs. Phelps did not seem to be overjoyed at receiv-
ing us, yet made no open effort to refuse.
“How long ago did the coma first show itself?”
asked Kennedy, after our introductions were com-
pleted. “Was your husband a man of neurotic ten-
dency, as far as you could judge?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say when it began,” she answered,
in a voice that was soft and musical and under per-
fect control. “The doctor would know that better.
No, he was not neurotic, I think.”


326 The Dream Doctor
“Did you ever see Mr. Phelps take any drugs—
not habitually, but just before this sleep came
On?”
Kennedy was seeking his information in a manner
and tone that would cause as little offence as possible.
“Oh, no,” she hastened. “No, never—absolutely.”
“You called in Dr. Forden the last night?”
“Yes, he had been Montague's physician many years
ago, you know.”
“I see,” remarked Kennedy, who was thrusting
about aimlessly to get her off her guard. “By the
way, you know there is a great deal of gossip about
the almost perfect state of preservation of the body,
Mrs. Phelps. I see it was not embalmed.”
She bit her lip and looked at Kennedy sharply.
“Why, why do you and Mr. Andrews worry me?
Can’t you see Doctor Forden?”
In her annoyance I fancied that there was a sur-
prising lack of sorrow. She seemed preoccupied. I
could not escape the feeling that she was putting some
obstacle in our way, or that from the day of the dis-
covery of the vandalism, some one had been making
an effort to keep the real facts concealed. Was she
shielding some one? It flashed over me that perhaps,
after all, she had submitted to the blackmail and had
buried the money at the appointed place. There
seemed to be little use in pursuing the inquiry, so we
excused ourselves, much, I thought, to her relief.
We found Doctor Forden, who lived on the same
street as the Phelpses several squares away, most for-
tunately at home. Forden was an extremely inter-
esting man, as is, indeed, the rule with physicians.


The Ghouls 329
from the station at Woodbine, just as it is getting
dusk.” Without another word he disappeared into
the dark room.
We met him that night as he had requested. He
had come up to Woodbine in the baggage-car of the
train with a powerful dog, for all the world like a
huge, grey wolf.
“Down, Schaef,” he ordered, as the dog began to
show an uncanny interest in me. “Let me introduce
my new dog-detective,” he chuckled. “She has a won-
derful record as a police-dog.”
We were making our way now through the thicken-
ing shadows of the town to the outskirts. “She’s a
German sheep-dog, a Schäferhund,” he explained.
“For my part, it is the English bloodhound in the
open country and the sheep-dog in the city and the
suburbs.”
Schaef seemed to have many of the characteristics
of the wild, prehistoric animal, among them the full,
upright ears of the wild dog which are such a great
help to it. She was a fine, alert, upstanding dog,
Thardy, fierce, and literally untiring, of a tawny light
brown like a lioness, about the same size and some-
what of the type of the smooth-coated collie, broad
of chest and with a full brush of tail.
Untamed though she seemed, she was perfectly
under Kennedy’s control, and rendered him absolute
and unreasoning obedience.
At the cemetery we established a strict watch about
the Phelps mausoleum and the swamp which lay across
the road, not a difficult thing to do as far as con-
cealment went, owing to the foliage. Still, for the


380 The Dream Doctor
same reason, it was hard to cover the whole ground.
In the shadow of a thicket we waited. Now and then
we could hear Schaef scouting about in the under-
brush, crouching and hiding, watching and guarding.
As the hours of waiting in the heavily laden night
air wore on, I wondered whether our vigil in this
weird place would be rewarded. The soughing of the
night wind in the evergreens, mournful at best, was
doubly so now. Hour after hour we waited patiently.
At last there was a slight noise from the direction
opposite the mausoleum and toward the swamp next
to the cemetery.
Kennedy reached out and drew us back into the
shadow deeper. “Some one is prowling about, ap-
proaching the mausoleum on that side, I think,” he
whispered.
Instantly there recurred to me the thought I had
had earlier in the day that perhaps, after all, the five
thousand dollars of hush money, for whatever pur-
pose it might be extorted, had been buried in the
swamp by Mrs. Phelps in her anxiety. Had that been
what she was concealing? Perhaps the blackmailer
had come to reconnoitre, and, if the money was there,
to take it away.
Schaef, who had been near us, was sniffing eagerly.
From our hiding-place we could just see her. She
had heard the sounds, too, even before we had, and
for an instant stood with every muscle tense.
Then, like an arrow, she darted into the underbrush.
An instant later, the sharp crack of a revolver rang
out. Schaef kept right on, never stopping a second,
except, perhaps, for surprise.


The Ghouls 331
“Crack!” almost in her face came a second spit of
fire in the darkness, and a bullet crashed through the
leaves and buried itself in a tree with a ping. The
intruder's marksmanship was poor, but the dog paid
no attention to it.
“One of the few animals that show no fear of gun-
fire,” muttered Kennedy, in undisguised admiration.
“G-r-r-r,” we heard from the police-dog.
“She has made a leap at the hand that holds the
gun,” cried Kennedy, now rising and moving rapidly
in the same direction. “She has been taught that a
man once badly bitten in the hand is nearly out of
the fight.”
We followed, too. As we approached we were just
in time to see Schaef running in and out between the
legs of a man who had heard us approach and was
hastily making tracks for the road. As he tripped,
she lunged for his back.
Kennedy blew shrilly on a police whistle. Reluc-
tantly, Schaef let go. One could see that with all her
canine instinct she wanted to “get” that man. Her
jaws were open, as, with longing eyes, she stood over
the prostrate form in the grass. The whistle was a
signal, and she had been taught to obey unquestion-
ingly.
“Don’t move until we get to you, or you are a dead
man,” shouted Kennedy, pulling an automatic as he
ran. “Are you hurt?”
There was no answer, but as we approached, the
man moved, ever so little, through curiosity to see
his pursuers.
Schaef shot forward. Again the whistle sounded


332 The Dream Doctor
and she dropped back. We bent over to seize him
as Kennedy secured the dog. -
“She's a devil,” ground out the prone figure on the
grass.
“Dana Phelps!” exclaimed Andrews, as the man
turned his face toward us. “What are you doing,
mixed up in this?”
Suddenly there was a movement in the rear, toward
the mausoleum itself. We turned, but it was too late.
Two dark figures slunk through the gloom, bearing
something between them. Kennedy slipped the leash
off Schaef and she shot out like a unchained bolt of
lightning.
There was the whir of a high-powered machine
which must have sneaked up with the muffler on dur-
ing the excitement. They had taken a desperate
chance and had succeeded. They were gone!


336 The Dream Doctor
pected to obtain proof of the identity of at least one
of the ghouls by the tooth-marks.
“It shows eight teeth, one of them decayed,” he
remarked. “By the way, there's no use watching here
any longer. I have some more work to do in the labo-
ratory which will keep me another day. To-morrow
night I shall be ready. Andrews, in the mean time I
leave the shadowing of Dana to you, and with the help
of Jameson I want you to arrange to have all those
connected with the case at my laboratory to-morrow
night without fail.”
Andrews and I had to do some clever scheming to
bring pressure to bear on the various persons inter-
ested to insure their attendance, now that Craig was
ready to act. Of course there was no difficulty in get-
ting Dana Phelps. Andrews's shadows reported noth-
ing in his actions of the following day that indicated
anything. Mrs. Phelps came down to town by train
and Doctor Forden motored in. Andrews even took
the precaution to secure Shaughnessy and the trained
nurse, Miss Tracy, who had been with Montague
Phelps during his illness but had not contributed any-
thing toward untangling the case. Andrews and my-
self completed the little audience.
We found Kennedy heating a large mass of some
composition such as dentists use in taking impressions
of the teeth.
“I shall be ready in a moment,” he excused himself,
still bending over his Bunsen flame. “By the way,
Mr. Phelps, if you will permit me.”
He had detached a wad of the softened material.
Phelps, taken by surprise, allowed him to make an im-


The X-Ray “Movies” 337
pression of his teeth, almost before he realised what
Kennedy was doing. The precedent set, so to speak,
Kennedy approached Doctor Forden. He demurred,
but finally consented. Mrs. Phelps followed, then the
nurse, and even Shaughnessy.
With a quick glance at each impression, Kennedy
laid them aside to harden.
“I am ready to begin,” he remarked at length, turn-
ing to a peculiar looking instrument, something like
three telescopes pointing at a centre in which was a
series of glass prisms.
“These five senses of ours are pretty dull detectives
sometimes,” Kennedy began. “But I find that when
we are able to call in outside aid we usually find that
there are no more mysteries.”
He placed something in a test-tube in line before
one of the barrels of the telescopes, near a brilliant
electric light.
“What do you see, Walter?” he asked, indicating an
eyepiece.
I looked. “A series of lines,” I replied. “What is
it?”
“That,” he explained, “is a spectroscope, and those
are the lines of the absorption spectrum. Each of
those lines, by its presence, denotes a different sub-
stance. Now, on the pavement of the Phelps mauso-
leum I found, you will recall, some roundish spots. I
have made a very diluted solution of them which is
placed in this tube.
“The applicability of the spectroscope to the dif-
ferentiation of various substances is too well known
to need explanation. Its value lies in the exact nature


338 The Dream Doctor
of the evidence furnished. Even the very dilute solu-
tion which I have been able to make of the material
scraped from these spots gives characteristic absorp-
tion bands between the D and E lines, as they are
called. Their wave-lengths are between 5774 and
5390. It is such a distinct absorption spectrum that
it is possible to determine with certainty that the fluid
actually contains a certain substance, even though the
microscope might fail to give sure proof. Blood—
human blood—that was what those stains were.”
He paused. “The spectra of the blood pigments,”
he added, “of the extremely minute quantities of blood
and the decomposition products of hemoglobin in the
blood are here infallibly shown, varying very distinctly
with the chemical changes which the pigments may
undergo.”
Whose blood was it? I asked myself. Was it of
some one who had visited the tomb, who was surprised
there or surprised some one else there? I was hardly
ready for Kennedy's quick remark.
“There were two kinds of blood there. One was
contained in the spots on the floor all about the mau-
soleum. There are marks on the arm of Dana Phelps
which he probably might say were made by the teeth
of my police-dog, Schaef. They are human tooth-
marks, however. He was bitten by some one in a
struggle. It was his blood on the floor of the mauso-
leum. Whose were the teeth?”
Kennedy fingered the now set impressions, then re-
sumed: “Before I answer that question, what else
does the spectroscope show? I found some spots near
the coffin, which has been broken open by a heavy ob-


340 The Dream Doctor
names of bioróntgenography, or kinematoradio-
graphy.”
Kennedy was holding his little audience breathless
as he proceeded. I fancied I could see Anginette
Phelps give a little shudder at the prospect of looking
into the very interior of a human body. But she was
pale with the fascination of it. Neither Forden nor
the nurse looked to the right or to the left. Dana
Phelps was open-eyed with wonder.
“In one X-ray photograph, or even in several,” con-
tinued Kennedy, “it is difficult to discover slight mo-
tions. Not so in a moving picture. For instance,
here I have a picture which will show you a living
body in all its moving details.”
On the screen before us was projected a huge shad-
owgraph of a chest and abdomen. We could see the
vertebrae of the spinal column, the ribs, and the vari-
ous organs.
“It is difficult to get a series of photographs directly
from a fluorescent screen,” Kennedy went on. “I
overcome the difficulty by having lenses of sufficient
rapidity to photograph even faint images on that
screen. It is better than the so-called serial method,
by which a number of separate X-ray pictures are
taken and then pieced together and rephotographed
to make the film. I can focus the X-rays first on the
screen by means of a special quartz objective which I
have devised. Then I take the pictures.
“Here, you see, are the lungs in slow or rapid respi-
ration. There is the rhythmically beating heart, dis-
tinctly pulsating in perfect outline. There is the
liver, moving up and down with the diaphragm, the


The X-Ray “Movies” 341
intestines, and the stomach. You can see the bones
moving with the limbs, as well as the inner visceral
life. All that is hidden to the eye by the flesh is now
made visible in striking manner.”
Never have I seen an audience at the “movies” so
thrilled as we were now, as Kennedy swayed our in-
terest at his will. I had been dividing my attention
between Kennedy and the extraordinary beauty of
the famous Russian dancer. I forgot Anginette
Phelps entirely.
Kennedy placed another film in the holder.
“You are now looking into the body of Montague
Phelps,” he announced suddenly.
We leaned forward eagerly. Mrs. Phelps gave a
Thalf-suppressed gasp. What was the secret hidden
in it?
There was the stomach, a curved sack something
like a bagpipe or a badly made boot, with a tiny canal
at the toe connecting it with the small intestine.
There were the heart and lungs.
“I have rendered the stomach visible,” resumed Ken-
nedy, “made it ‘metallic,’ so to speak, by injecting a
solution of bismuth in buttermilk, the usual method,
by which it becomes more impervious to the X-rays
and hence darker in the skiagraph. I took these pic-
tures not at the rate of fourteen or so a second, like
the others, but at intervals of a few seconds. I did
that so that, when I run them off, I get a sort of com-
pressed moving picture. What you see in a short
space of time actually took much longer to occur. I
could have either kind of picture, but I prefer the lat-
ter.


342 The Dream Doctor
“For, you will take notice that there is movement
here—of the heart, of the lungs, of the stomach—
faint, imperceptible under ordinary circumstances, but
nevertheless, movement.”
He was pointing at the lungs. “A single peristal-
tic contraction takes place normally in a very few sec-
onds. Here it takes minutes. And the stomach.
Notice what the bismuth mixture shows. There is a
very slow series of regular wave-contractions from the
fundus to the pylorus. Ordinarily one wave takes
ten seconds to traverse it; here it is so slow as almost
to be unnoticed.”
What was the implication of his startling, almost
gruesome, discovery? I saw it clearly, yet hung on
his words, afraid to admit even to myself the logical
interpretation of what I saw.
“Reconstruct the case,” continued Craig excitedly.
“Mr. Phelps, always a bon vivant and now so situated
by marriage that he must be so, comes back to Amer-
ica to find his personal fortune—gone.
“What was left? He did as many have done. He
took out a new large policy on his life. How was he
to profit by it? Others have committed suicide, have
died to win. Cases are common now where men have
ended their lives under such circumstances by swal-
lowing bichloride-of-mercury tablets, a favourite
method, it seems, lately.
“But Phelps did not want to die to win. Life was
too sweet to him. He had another scheme.” Ken-
nedy dropped his voice.
“One of the most fascinating problems in specula-
tion as to the future of the race under the influence of


346 The Dream Doctor
“The-body is—at my office,” he said, as we faced
him with deathlike stillness. “Phelps had told us to
get him within ten days. We did get him, finally.
Gentlemen, you, who were seeking murderers, are, in
effect, murderers. You kept us away two days too
long. It was too late. We could not revive him.
Phelps is really dead!”
“The deuce!” exclaimed Andrews, “the policy is
incontestible!”
As he turned to us in disgust, his eyes fell on Angi-
nette Phelps, sobered down by the terrible tragedy and
nearly a physical wreck from real grief. i
“Still,” he added hastily, “we’ll pay without a pro-
test.” -
She did not even hear him. It seemed that the but-
terfly in her was crushed, as Dr. Forden and Miss
Tracy gently led her away.
They had all left, and the laboratory was again in
its normal state of silence, except for the occasional
step of Kennedy as he stowed away the apparatus he
Thad used.
“I must say that I was one of the most surprised
in the room at the outcome of that case,” I confessed
at length. “I fully expected an arrest.”
He said nothing, but went on methodically restoring
his apparatus to its proper place.
“What a peculiar life you lead, Craig,” I pursued
reflectively. “One day it is a case that ends with
such a bright spot in our lives as the recollection of
the Shirleys; the next goes to the other extreme of
gruesomeness and one can hardly think about it with-


The X-Ray “Movies” 347
out a shudder. And then, through it all, you go with
the high speed power of a racing motor.”
“That last case appealed to me, like many others,”
he ruminated, “just because it was so unusual, so
gruesome, as you call it.”
He reached into the pocket of his coat, hung over
the back of a chair.
“Now, here's another most unusual case, apparently.
It begins, really, at the other end, so to speak, with
the conviction, begins at the very place where we de-
tectives send a man as the last act of our little
dramas.”
“What?” I gasped, “another case before even this
one is fairly cleaned up? Craig–you are impossible.
You get worse instead of better.”
“Read it,” he said, simply. Kennedy handed me a
letter in the angular hand affected by many women.
It was dated at Sing Sing, or rather Ossining. Craig
seemed to appreciate the surprise which my face must
have betrayed at the curious combination of circum-
stances.
“Nearly always there is the wife or mother of a con-
demned man who lives in the shadow of the prison,”
he remarked quietly, adding, “where she can look
down at the grim walls, hoping and fearing.”
I said nothing, for the letter spoke for itself.
I have read of your success as a scientific detective and hope
that you will pardon me for writing to you, but it is a matter
of life or death for one who is dearer to me than all the world.
Perhaps you recall reading of the trial and conviction of my
husband, Sanford Godwin, at East Point. The case did not at-
tract much attention in New York papers, although he was de-
fended by an able lawyer from the city.


350 The Dream Doctor
dor lights, and then their almost as sudden flaring-up,
had a terrible meaning, well known to the men inside.
Hers was no less an agony than that of the men in the
curtained cells, since she had learned that when the
lights grow dim at dawn at Sing Sing, it means that
the electric power has been borrowed for just that
little while to send a body straining against the straps
of the electric chair, snuffing out the life of a man.
To-day she had evidently been watching in both di-
rections, watching eagerly the carriages as they
climbed the hill, as well as in the direction of the
prison.
“How can I ever thank you, Professor Kennedy,”
she greeted us at the door, keeping back with difficulty
the tears that showed how much it meant to have any
one interest himself in her husband's case.
There was that gentleness about Mrs. Godwin that
comes only to those who have suffered much.
“It has been a long fight,” she began, as we talked
in her modest little sitting-room, into which the sun
streamed brightly with no thought of the cold shad-
ows in the grim building below. “Oh, and such a
hard, heartbreaking fight! Often it seems as if we
had exhausted every means at our disposal, and yet
we shall never give up. Why cannot we make the
world see our case as we see it? Everything seems
to have conspired against us—and yet I cannot, I will
not believe that the law and the science that have con-
demned him are the last words in law and science.”
“You said in your letter that the courts were so slow
and the lawyers so—”
“Yes, so cold, so technical. They do not seem to


The Death House 351
realise that a human life is at stake. With them it is
almost like a game in which we are the pawns. And
sometimes I fear, in spite of what the lawyers say,
that without some new evidence, it—it will go hard
with him.”
“You have not given up hope in the appeal?” asked
Kennedy gently. -
“It is merely on technicalities of the law,” she re-
plied with quiet fortitude, “that is, as nearly as I can
make out from the language of the papers. Our law-
yer is Salo Kahn, of the big firm of criminal lawyers,
Smith, Kahn & Smith.”
“A good lawyer,” encouraged Kennedy.
“Yes, I know. He has done all that lawyers can
do. But the evidence was—what you would call, sci-
entific—absolutely. Three expert chemists testified
for the people that they found the alkaloid, conine, in
the body. You see, I have thought and rethought,
read and reread the case so much that I can talk like
a—a man about it. Yes, they found the alkaloid in
the body and try as he did there was no way that Mr.
Rahn could shake their testimony. The jury believed
them.
“And yet, oh, Professor Kennedy, is there nothing
higher than this cold science of theirs? It cannot be
—it cannot be. Sanford has told me the truth, and I
know I would know if he had not been telling me what
was true.”
It was splendid, this exhibition of a woman’s faith-
fulness, of this wife fighting against such tremendous
weight of odds, fighting his fight, daring both law and
science in her intrepid belief in him.


352 The Dream Doctor
“Conine,” mused Kennedy, half to himself. I could
not tell whether he was thinking of what he repeated
or of the little woman.
“Yes, the active principle of hemlock,” she went on.
“That was what the experts discovered, they swore.
In the pure state, I believe, it is more poisonous than
anything except the cyanides. And it was absolutely
scientific evidence. They repeated the tests in court.
There was no doubt of it. But, oh, he did not do it.
Some one else did it. He did not—he could not.”
Kennedy said nothing for a few minutes, but from
his tone when he did speak it was evident that he was
deeply touched.
“Since our marriage we lived with old Mr. Godwin
in the historic Godwin House at East Point,” she re-
sumed, as he renewed his questioning. “Sanford—
that was my husband's real last name until he came
as a boy to work for Mr. Godwin in the office of the
factory and was adopted by his employer—Sanford
and I kept house for him.
“About a year ago he began to grow feeble and sel-
dom went to the factory, which Sanford managed for
him. One night Mr. Godwin was taken suddenly ill.
I don’t know how long he had been ill before we heard
him groaning, but he died almost before we could sum-
mon a doctor. There was really nothing suspicious
about it, but there had always been a great deal of
jealousy of my husband in the town and especially
among the few distant relatives of Mr. Godwin.
What must have started as an idle, gossipy rumour
developed into a serious charge that my husband had
hastened his old guardian's death.


The Death House 355
door—the door from the death house to the death
chamber. -
While Kennedy was talking to the prisoner, a guard
volunteered to show me the death chamber and the
“chair.” No other furniture was there in the little
brick house of one room except this awful chair, of
yellow oak with broad, leather straps. There it stood,
the sole article in the brightly varnished room of about
twenty-five feet square with walls of clean blue, this
grim acolyte of modern scientific death. There were
the wet electrodes that are fastened to the legs through
slits in the trousers at the calves; above was the pipe-
like fixture, like a gruesome helmet of leather that fits
over the head, carrying the other electrode.
Back of the condemned was the switch which lets
loose a lethal store of energy, and back of that the
prison morgue where the bodies are taken. I looked
about. In the wall to the left toward the death house
was also a door, on this side yellow. Somehow I could
not get from my mind the fascination of that door—
the threshold of the grave.
Meanwhile Kennedy sat in the little cage and talked
with the convicted man across the three-foot distance
between cell and screen. I did not see him at that
time, but Kennedy repeated afterward what passed,
and it so impressed me that I will set it down as if I
had been present.
Sanford Godwin was a tall, ashen-faced man, in the
prison pallor of whose face was written the determis
nation of despair, a man in whose blue eyes was a
queer, half-insane light of hope. One knew that if it
had not been for the little woman at the window at


856 The Dream Doctor
the top of the hill, the hope would probably long ago
have faded. But this man knew she was always there,
thinking, watching, eagerly planning in aid of any
new scheme in the long fight for freedom.
“The alkaloid was present, that is certain,” he told
Kennedy. “My wife has told you that. It was scien-
tifically proved. There is no use in attacking that.”
Later on he remarked: “Perhaps you think it
strange that one in the very shadow of the death
chair”—the word stuck in his throat—“can talk so
impersonally of his own case. Sometimes I think it
is not my case, but some one else’s. And then—that
door.”
He shuddered and turned away from it. On one
side was life, such as it was; on the other, instant
death. No wonder he pleaded with Kennedy.
“Why, Walter,” exclaimed Craig, as we walked
back to the warden's office to telephone to town for a
car to take us up to East Point, “whenever he looks
out of that cage he sees it. He may close his eyes—
and still see it. When he exercises, he sees it. Think-
ing by day and dreaming by night, it is always there.
Think of the terrible hours that man must pass, know-
ing of the little woman eating her heart out. Is he
really guilty? I must find out. If he is not, I never
saw a greater tragedy than this slow, remorseless ap-
proach of death, in that daily, hourly shadow of the
little green door.”
East Point was a queer old town on the upper Hud-
son, with a varying assortment of industries. Just
outside, the old house of the Godwins stood on a bluff
overlooking the majestic river. Kennedy had wanted


The Death House 357
to see it before any one suspected his mission, and a
note from Mrs. Godwin to a friend had been sufficient.
Carefully he went over the deserted and now half-
wrecked house, for the authorities had spared nothing
in their search for poison, even going over the garden
and the lawns in the hope of finding some of the poi-
sonous shrub, hemlock, which it was contended had
been used to put an end to Mr. Godwin.
As yet nothing had been done to put the house in or-
der again and, as we walked about, we noticed a pile
of old tins in the yard which had not been removed.
Kennedy turned them over with his stick. Then
he picked one up and examined it attentively.
“H-m—a blown can,” he remarked.
“Blown?” I repeated.
“Yes. When the contents of a tin begin to deterio-
rate they sometimes give off gases which press out the
ends of the tin. You can see how these ends
bulge.”
Our next visit was to the district attorney, a young
man, Gordon Kilgore, who seemed not unwilling to
discuss the case frankly.
“I want to make arrangements for disinterring the
body,” explained Kennedy. “Would you fight such
a move?”
“Not at all, not at all,” he answered brusquely.
“Simply make the arrangements through Kahn. I
shall interpose no objection. It is the strongest,
most impregnable part of the case, the discovery of
the poison. If you can break that down you will do
more than any one else has dared to hope. But it
can’t be done. The proof was too strong. Of course


358 The Dream Doctor
it is none of my business, but I'd advise some other
point of attack.”
I must confess to a feeling of disappointment when
Kennedy announced after leaving Kilgore that, for
the present, there was nothing more to be done at
East Point until Kahn had made the arrangements
for reopening the grave.
We motored back to Ossining, and Kennedy tried
to be reassuring to Mrs. Godwin.
“By the way,” he remarked, just before we left,
“you used a good deal of canned goods at the God-
win house, didn't you?”
“Yes, but not more than other people, I think,”
she said. -
“Do you recall using any that were-well, per-
haps not exactly spoiled, but that had anything pe-
culiar about them?”
“I remember once we thought we found some cans
that seemed to have been attacked by mice—at least
they smelt so, though how mice could get through a
tin can we couldn’t see.”
“Mice?” queried Kennedy. “Had a mousey smell?
That's interesting. Well, Mrs. Godwin, keep up a
good heart. Depend on me. What you have told me
to-day has made me more than interested in your case.
I shall waste no time in letting you know when any.
thing encouraging develops.”
Craig had never had much patience with red tape
that barred the way to the truth, yet there were times
when law and legal procedure had to be respected,
no matter how much they hampered, and this was one
of them. The next day the order was obtained per-
|


The Death House 359
mitting the opening again of the grave of old Mr.
Godwin. The body was exhumed, and Kennedy set
about his examination of what secrets it might hide.
Meanwhile, it seemed to me that the suspense was
terrible. Kennedy was moving slowly, I thought.
Not even the courts themselves could have been more
deliberate. Also, he was keeping much to himself.
Still, for another whole day, there was the slow,
inevitable approach of the thing that now, I, too, had
come to dread—the handing down of the final decision
on the appeal.
Yet what could Craig do otherwise, I asked myself.
* I had become deeply interested in the case by this
time and spent the time reading all the evidence, hun-
dreds of pages of it. It was cold, hard, brutal, scien-
tific fact, and as I read I felt that hope faded for the
ashen-faced man and the pallid little woman. It
seemed the last word in science. Was there any way
of escape?
Impatient as I was, I often wondered what must
have been the suspense of those to whom the case
meant everything.
“How are the tests coming along?” I ventured one
night, after Kahn had arranged for the uncovering
of the grave.
It was now two days since Kennedy had gone up
to East Point to superintend the exhumation and had
returned to the city with the materials which had
caused him to keep later hours in the laboratory than
I had ever known even the indefatigable Craig to
spend on a stretch before.
He shook his head doubtfully.


360 The Dream Doctor
“Walter,” he admitted, “I’m afraid I have reached
the limit on the line of investigation I had planned
at the start.”
I looked at him in dismay. “What then?” I man-
aged to gasp. -
“I am going up to East Point again to-morrow to
look over that house and start a new line. You can
go.”
No urging was needed, and the following day saw
us again on the ground. The house, as I have said,
had been almost torn to pieces in the search for the
will and the poison evidence. As before, we went
to it unannounced, and this time we had no difficulty
in getting in. Kennedy, who had brought with him
a large package, made his way directly to a sort of
drawing-room next to the large library, in the closet
of which the will had been discovered.
He unwrapped the package and took from it a huge
brace and bit, the bit a long, thin, murderous looking
affair such as might have come from a burglar's kit.
I regarded it much in that light.
“What's the lay?” I asked, as he tapped over the
walls to ascertain of just what they were composed.
Without a word he was now down on his knees,
drilling a hole in the plaster and lath. When he
struck an obstruction he stopped, removed the bit, in-
serted another, and began again.
“Are you going to put in a detectaphone?” I asked
agaln.
He shook his head. “A detectaphone wouldn’t be
of any use here,” he replied. “No one is going to do
any talking in that room.”


The Death House 361.
Again the brace and bit were at work. At last
the wall had been penetrated, and he quickly removed
every trace from the other side that would have at-
tracted attention to a little hole in an obscure corner
of the flowered wall-paper.
Next, he drew out what looked like a long putty-
blower, perhaps a foot long and three-eighths of an
inch in diameter.
“What's that?” I asked, as he rose after carefully
inserting it.
“Look through it,” he replied simply, still at work
on some other apparatus he had brought.
I looked. In spite of the smallness of the opening
at the other end, I was amazed to find that I could
see nearly the whole room on the other side of the
wall.
“It’s a detectascope,” he explained, “a tube with a
fish-eye lens which I had an expert optician make for
me.”
“A fish-eye lens?” I repeated.
“Yes. The focus may be altered in range so that
any one in the room may be seen and recognised and
any action of his may be detected. The original of
this was devised by Gaillard Smith, the adapter of
the detectaphone. The instrument is something like
the cytoscope, which the doctors use to look into the
human interior. Now, look through it again. Do
you see the closet?”
Again I looked. “Yes,” I said, “but will one of us
have to watch here all the time?”
He had been working on a black box in the mean-
time, and now he began to set it up, adjusting it to


362 The Dream Doctor
the hole in the wall which he enlarged on our
side.
“No, that is my own improvement on it. You re-
member once we used a quick-shutter camera with an
electric attachment, which moved the shutter on the
contact of a person with an object in the room? Well,
this camera has that quick shutter. But, in
addition, I have adapted to the detectascope an
invention by Professor Robert Wood, of Johns Hop-
kins. He has devised a fish-eye camera that ‘sees’
over a radius of one hundred and eighty degrees—
not only straight in front, but over half a circle, every
point in that room.
“You know the refracting power of a drop of water.
Since it is a globe, it refracts the light which reaches
it from all directions. If it is placed like the lens of
a camera, as Dr. Wood tried it, so that one-half of
it catches the light, all the light caught will be re-
fracted through it. Fishes, too, have a wide range
of vision. Some have eyes that see over half a circle.
So the lens gets its name. Ordinary cameras, be-
cause of the flatness of their lenses, have a range of
only a few degrees, the widest in use, I believe, taking
in only ninety-six, or a little more than a quarter of
a circle. So, you see, my detectascope has a range
almost twice as wide as that of any other.”
Though I did not know what he expected to dis-
cover and knew that it was useless to ask, the thing
seemed very interesting. Craig did not pause, how-
ever, to enlarge on the new machine, but gathered up
his tools and announced that our next step would be
a visit to a lawyer whom the Elmores had retained


The Death House 363
as their personal counsel to look after their interests,
now that the district attorney seemed to have cleared
up the criminal end of the case.
Hollins was one of the prominent attorneys of East
Point, and before the election of Kilgore as prose-
cutor had been his partner. Unlike Kilgore, we
found him especially uncommunicative and inclined
to resent our presence in the case as intruders.
The interview did not seem to me to be productive
of anything. In fact, it seemed as if Craig were giv-
ing Hollins much more than he was getting.
“I shall be in town over night,” remarked Craig.
“In fact, I am thinking of going over the library up
at the Godwin house soon, very carefully.” He spoke
casually. “There may be, you know, some finger-
prints on the walls around that closet which might
prove interesting.”
A quick look from Hollins was the only answer.
In fact, it was seldom that he uttered more than a
monosyllable as we talked over the various aspects
of the case.
A half-hour later, when he had left and had gone
to the hotel, I asked Kennedy suspiciously, “Why
did you expose your hand to Hollins, Craig’”
He laughed. “Oh, Walter,” he remonstrated,
“don’t you know that it is nearly always useless to
look for finger-prints, except under some circum-
stances, even a few days afterward? This is months,
not days. Why on iron and steel they last with tol-
erable certainty only a short time, and not much
longer on silver, glass, or wood. But they are seldom
permanent unless they are made with ink or blood


364 The Dream Doctor
or something that leaves a more or less indelible
mark. That was a ‘plant.’”
“But what do you expect to gain by it?”
“Well,” he replied enigmatically, “no one is neces-
sarily honest.”
It was late in the afternoon when Kennedy again
visited the Godwin house and examined the camera.
Without a word he pulled the detectascope from the
wall and carried the whole thing to the developing-
room of the local photographer.
There he set to work on the film and I watched him
in silence. He seemed very much excited as he
watched the film develop, until at last he held it up,
dripping, to the red light.
“Some one has entered that room this afternoon
and attempted to wipe off the walls and woodwork
of that closet, as I expected,” he exclaimed.
“Who was it?” I asked, leaning over.
Kennedy said nothing, but pointed to a figure on
the film. I bent closer. It was the figure of a
WOIſlall.
“Miriam " I exclaimed in surprise.


XXIV
The Final Day
LOOKED aghast at him. If it had been either
Bradford or Lambert, both of whom we had
come to know since Kennedy had interested himself
in the case, or even Hollins or Kilgore, I should not
have been surprised. But Miriam'
“How could she have any connection with the
case?” I asked incredulously.
Kennedy did not attempt to explain. “It is a fatal
mistake, Walter, for a detective to assume that he
knows what anybody would do in any given circum-
stances. The only safe course for him is to find out
what the persons in question did do. People are
always doing the unexpected. This is a case of it,
as you see. I am merely trying to get back at facts.
Come; I think we might as well not stay over night,
after all. I should like to drop off on the way back
to the city to see Mrs. Godwin.”
As we rode up the hill I was surprised to see that
there was no one at the window, nor did any one seem
to pay attention to our knocking at the door.
Kennedy turned the knob quickly and strode in.
Seated in a chair, as white as a wraith from the
grave, was Mrs. Godwin, staring straight ahead, see-
ing nothing, hearing nothing.
365


The Final Day 367.
and hoped. But I can hope no more—no more. The
last chance is gone.”
“No-not the last chance,” exclaimed Craig,
springing to her side lest she should fall. Then he
added gently, “You must come with me to East Point
—immediately.”
“What—leave him here—alone—in the last days?
No—no-no. Never. I must see him. I wonder if
they have told him yet.”
It was evident that she had lost faith in Kennedy,
in everybody, now.
“Mrs. Godwin,” he urged. “Come—you must. It
is a last chance.”
Eagerly he was pouring out the story of the dis-
covery of the afternoon by the little detectascope.
“Miriam?” she repeated, dazed. “She-know any-
thing—it can’t be. No-don’t raise a false hope
now.” -
“It is the last chance,” he urged again. “Come.
There is not an hour to waste now.”
There was no delay, no deliberation about Kennedy
now. He had been forced out into the open by the
course of events, and he meant to take advantage of
every precious moment.
Down the hill our car sped to the town, with Mrs.
Godwin still protesting, but hardly realising what
was going on. Regardless of tolls, Kennedy called
up his laboratory in New York and had two of his
most careful students pack up the stuff which he de-
scribed minutely to be carried to East Point immedi-
ately by train. Kahn, too, was at last found and
summoned to meet us there, also.


368 The Dream Doctor
Miles never seemed longer than they did to us as
we tore over the country from Ossining to East Point,
a silent party, yet keyed up by an excitement that
none of us had ever felt before.
Impatiently we awaited the arrival of the men
from Kennedy's laboratory, while we made Mrs. God-
win as comfortable as possible in a room at the hotel.
In one of the parlours Kennedy was improvising a
laboratory as best he could. Meanwhile, Kahn had
arrived, and together we were seeking those whose
connection with, or interest in, the case made neces-
sary their presence.
It was well along toward midnight before the
hasty conference had been gathered; besides Mrs.
Godwin, Salo Kahn, and ourselves, the three Elmores,
Kilgore, and Hollins.
Strange though it was, the room seemed to me al-
most to have assumed the familiar look of the labora-
tory in New York. There was the same clutter of
tubes and jars on the tables, but above all that same
feeling of suspense in the air which I had come to
associate with the clearing up of a case. There was
something else in the air, too. It was a peculiar
mousey Smell, disagreeable, and one which made it
a relief to have Kennedy begin in a low voice to tell
why he had called us together so hastily.
“I shall start,” announced Kennedy, “at the point
where the state left off—with the proof that Mr. God-
win died of conine, or hemlock poisoning. Conine,
as every chemist knows, has a long and well-known
history. It was the first alkaloid to be synthesised.
Here is a sample, this colourless, oily fluid. No


The Final Day 369
doubt you have noticed the mousey odour in this
room. As little as one part of conine to fifty thou-
sand of water gives off that odour—it is character-
istic. z
“I have proceeded with extraordinary caution in
my investigation of this case,” he went on. “In fact,
there would have been no value in it, otherwise, for
the experts for the people seem to have established
the presence of conine in the body with absolute cer-
tainty.”
He paused and we waited expectantly.
“I have had the body exhumed and have repeated
the tests. The alkaloid which I discovered had given
precisely the same results as in their tests.”
My heart sank. What was he doing—convicting
the man over again?
“There is one other test which I tried,” he contin-
ued, “but which I can not take time to duplicate to-
night. It was testified at the trial that conine, the
active principle of hemlock, is intensely poisonous.
No chemical antidote is known. A fifth of a grain
has serious results; a drop is fatal. An injection
of a most minute quantity of real conine will kill a
mouse, for instance, almost instantly. But the co-
nine which I have isolated in the body is inert!”
It came like a bombshell to the prosecution, so
bewildering was the discovery.
“Inert?” cried Kilgore and Hollins almost to-
gether. “It can’t be. You are making sport of the
best chemical experts that money could obtain. In-
ert? Read the evidence—read the books.”
“On the contrary,” resumed Craig, ignoring the


372 The Dream Doctor
seemed to explain a part of the case, it was far from
explaining all.
“Then followed,” he hurried on, “the development
of the usual ptomaines in the body itself. These, I
may say, had no relation to the cause of death itself.
The putrefactive germs began their attack. What-
ever there may have been in the body before, cer.
tainly they produced a cadaveric ptomaine conine.
For many animal tissues and fluids, especially if
somewhat decomposed, yield not infrequently com-
pounds of an oily nature with a mousey odour, fum-
ing with hydrochloric acid and in short, acting just
like conine. There is ample evidence, I have found,
that conine or a substance possessing most, if not
all, of its properties is at times actually produced in
animal tissues by decomposition. And the fact is,
I believe, that a number of cases have arisen, in which
the poisonous alkaloid was at first supposed to have
been discovered which were really mistakes.”
The idea was startling in the extreme. Here was
Rennedy, as it were, overturning what had been con-
sidered the last word in science as it had been laid
down by the experts for the prosecution, opinions so
impregnable that courts and juries had not hesitated
to condemn a man to death.
“There have been cases,” Craig went on solemnly,
“and I believe this to be one, where death has been
pronounced to have been caused by wilful adminis.
tration of a vegetable alkaloid, which toxicologists
would now put down as ptomaine-poisoning cases.
Innocent people have possibly already suffered and
may in the future. But medical experts—” he laid


374 The Dream Doctor
tion, pressed my arm. I turned quickly to see if she
needed assistance. Her face was radiant. All the
fees for big cases in the world could never have com-
pensated Kennedy for the mute, unrestrained grati-
tude which the little woman shot at him.
Kennedy saw it, and in the quick shifting of his
eyes to my face, I read that he relied on me to take
care of Mrs. Godwin while he plunged again into the
clearing up of the mystery.
“I have here the will—the second one,” he snapped
out, turning and facing the others in the room.
Craig turned a switch in an apparatus which his
students had brought from New York. From a tube
on the table came a peculiar bluish light.
“This,” he explained, “is a source of ultraviolet
rays. They are not the bluish light which you see,
but rays contained in it which you can not see.
“Ultraviolet rays have recently been found very
valuable in the examination of questioned documents.
By the use of a lens made of quartz covered with a
thin film of metallic silver, there has been developed
a practical means of making photographs by the in-
visible rays of light above the spectrum—these ultra-
violet rays. The quartz lens is necessary, because
these rays will not pass through ordinary glass, while
the silver film acts as a screen to cut off the ordinary
light rays and those below the spectrum. By this
means, most white objects are photographed black
and even transparent objects like glass are black.
“I obtained the copy of this will, but under the
condition from the surrogate that absolutely nothing
must be done to it to change a fibre of the paper or


The Final Day 375
a line of a letter. It was a difficult condition. While
there are chemicals which are frequently resorted to
for testing the authenticity of disputed decuments
such as wills and deeds, their use frequently injures
or destroys the paper under test. So far as I could
determine, the document also defied the microscope.
“But ultraviolet photography does not affect
the document tested in any way, and it has lately
been used practically in detecting forgeries. I have
photographed the last page of the will with its sig-
natures, and here it is. What the eye itself can not
see, the invisible light reveals.”
He was holding the document and the copy, just
an instant, as if considering how to announce with
'ºt effect what he had discovered.
“In order to unravel this mystery,” he resumed,
looking up and facing the Elmores, Kilgore, and Hol-
lins squarely, “I decided to find out whether any one
had had access to that closet where the will was hid-
den. It was long ago, and there seemed to be little
that I could do. I knew it was useless to look for
finger-prints.
“So I used what we detectives now call the law
of suggestion. I questioned closely one who was in
touch with all those who might have had such access.
I hinted broadly at seeking finger-prints which might
lead to the identity of one who had entered the house
unknown to the Godwins, and placed a document
where private detectives would subsequently find it
under suspicious circumstances.
“Naturally, it would seem to one who was guilty
of such an act, or knew of it, that there might, after


376 The Dream Doctor
all, be finger-prints. I tried it. I found out through
this little tube, the detectascope, that one really en-
tered the room after that, and tried to wipe off any
supposed finger-prints that might still remain. That
settled it. The second will was a forgery, and the
person who entered that room so stealthily this after-
noon knows that it is a forgery.”
As Kennedy slapped down on the table the film
from his camera, which had been concealed, Mrs. God-
win turned her now large and unnaturally bright
eyes and met those of the other woman in the room.
“Oh—oh–heaven help us—me, I mean?' cried
Miriam, unable to bear the strain of the turn of events
longer. “I knew there would be retribution—I knew
—I knew—”
Mrs. Godwin was on her feet in a moment.
“Once my intuition was not wrong though all sci-
ence and law was against me,” she pleaded with Ken-
nedy. There was a gentleness in her tone that fell
like a soft rain on the surging passions of those who
had wronged her so shamefully. “Professor Ken-
nedy, Miriam could not have forged—”
Kennedy smiled. “Science was not against you,
Mrs. Godwin. Ignorance was against you. And
your intuition does not go contrary to science this
time, either.”
It was a splendid exhibition of fine feeling which
Kennedy waited to have impressed on the Elmores,
as though burning it into their minds.
“Miriam Elmore knew that her brothers had forged
a will and hidden it. To expose them was to con-
vict them of a crime. She kept their secret, which


The Final Day 377
was the secret of all three. She even tried to hide
the finger-prints which would have branded her
brothers.
“For ptomaine poisoning had unexpectedly has-
tened the end of old Mr. Godwin. Then gossip and
the ‘scientists' did the rest. It was accidental, but
Bradford and Lambert Elmore were willing to let
events take their course and declare genuine the
forgery which they had made so skilfully, even though
it convicted an innocent man of murder and killed
his faithful wife. As soon as the courts can be set
in motion to correct an error of science by the truth
of later science, Sing Sing will lose one prisoner from
the death house and gain two forgers in his place.”
Mrs. Godwin stood before us, radiant. But as
Kennedy's last words sank into her mind, her face
clouded.
“Must—must it be an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth?” she pleaded eagerly. “Must that grim
prison take in others, even if my husband goes free?”
Kennedy looked at her long and earnestly, as if
to let the beauty of her character, trained by its long
suffering, impress itself on his mind indelibly.
He shook his head slowly.
“I’m afraid there is no other way, Mrs. Godwin,”
he said gently taking her arm and leaving the others
to be dealt with by a constable whom he had dozing
in the hotel lobby.
“Kahn is going up to Albany to get the pardon—
there can be no doubt about it now,” he added. “Mrs.
Godwin, if you care to do so, you may stay here at
the hotel, or you may go down with us on the mid-


378 The Dream Doctor
night train as far as Ossining. I will wire ahead
for a conveyance to meet you at the station. Mr.
Jameson and I must go on to New York.”
“The nearer I am to Sanford now, the happier I
shall be,” she answered, bravely keeping back the
tears of happiness.
The ride down to New York, after our train left Os-
sining, was accomplished in a day coach in which our
fellow passengers slept in every conceivable attitude
of discomfort.
Yet late, or rather early, as it was, we found plenty
of life still in the great city that never sleeps. Tired,
exhausted, I was at least glad to feel that finally we
were at home.
“Craig,” I yawned, as I began to throw off my
clothes, “I’m ready to sleep a week.”
There was no answer.
I looked up at him almost resentfully. He had
picked up the mail that lay under our letter slot and
was going through it as eagerly as if the clock regis-
tered P. M. instead of A. M.
“Let me see,” I mumbled sleepily, checking over
my notes, “how many days have we been at it?”.
I turned the pages slowly, after the manner in
which my mind was working.
“It was the twenty-sixth when you got that let-
ter from Ossining,” I calculated, “and to-day makes
the thirtieth. My heavens—is there still another day
of it? Is there no rest for the Wicked?”
Kennedy looked up and laughed.
He was pointing at the calendar on the desk be-
fore him.


The Final Day 379
“There are only thirty days in the month,” he re-
marked slowly.
“Thank the Lord,” I exclaimed. “I’m all in P’
He tipped his desk-chair back and bit the amber of
his meerchaum contemplatively.
“But to-day is the first,” he drawled, turning the
leaf on the calendar with just a flicker of a smile.
THE END